Mohammed Azarudeen alias Azar, another accused in the 2022 Coimbatore car IED bomb blast case has been arrested by the National Investigation Agency (NIA), the agency revealed on 1 September 2023.
This is the 13th person to be arrested in the case.
Azarudeen reportedly was already lodged at Viyyur high security prison in Thrissur, Kerala in relation to another case. According to the NIA press release, he was arrested and chargesheeted in another Tamil Nadu ISIS module case and was subsequently sent to judicial custody.
Investigation by security agencies revealed that Azarudeen had previously taken secret ‘bayan’ classes along with Jamesha Mubeen who was killed in the explosion. The NIA has stated that it was at these classes that Mubin, Azarudeen and others got indoctrinated and radicalized to commit violent terror attacks. Mubin was earlier investigated by the NIA in 2019 as he had been attending Bayan classes at a Coimbatore mosque of the Tamil Nadu Thowheed Jamath.
13TH ACCUSED IN NIA NET IN ISIS-INSPIRED COIMBATORE CAR BOMB BLAST CASE pic.twitter.com/8zRoqSpOlL
— NIA India (@NIA_India) September 1, 2023
The NIA during its investigation also found that Jamesha Mubeen along with 2 other accused met Azarudeen in prison.
“They had then hatched the Sathyamangalam conspiracy (the car bomb blast plan was concretized in the Sathyamangalam forests) to plan and prepare a terror attack to revenge Azar’s arrest and to get him released from jail through a jail-attack.”, the NIA stated in its press release.
It is noteworthy to mention that while the DMK leaders and the Dravidianist media have been downplaying and trivializing the incident as a “cylinder blast”, the NIA has once again asserted it to be a terror attack.
The 2022 Coimbatore Bomb Blast Terror Attack
The 2022 Coimbatore Bomb Blast is a terrorist attack where an LPG cylinder burst inside a Maruti 800 car at around 4.30 am on 23 October 2022, causing the vehicle to explode. The vehicle carrying the improvised explosive device was driven by Jamesha Mubeen. The blast happened outside the famous Kottai Eshwaran Temple. The explosion was initially believed to be an accident but a thorough investigation into the incident, revealed that the cylinder explosion was a terrorist attack committed by Islamic terrorists during the Diwali festival. Nails and ball bearings supposedly meant for inflicting maximum casualties were also recovered from the spot. Investigtors had recovered handwritten paper documents recovered from the house of Jamesha Mubeen listing the popular spots in Coimbatore that they had plans to recce or were already done. Chemicals used for making crude bombs were also found at his house.
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