13/7 aides may face mentor ‘Imran’

Mateen Hafeez TNN

Mumbai: City police arrested two persons from Darbhanga, Naqi Ahmed and Nadeem Akhtar, for their alleged role in the 13/7 triple Mumbai blasts. They had actually spent time and interacted with the arrested IM co-founder on a day-to-day basis prior to the blasts. Police would, at some stage, bring all three together for interrogation.
 

    State ATS officials said Naqi and Nadeem used to visit a local madrassa in Samastipur where Yasin was a teacher. Nadeem earlier told interrogators that Yasin had introduced himself as Imran.
 

    “He was a learned man who knew many things in and out. We were impressed with him. It was in late 2010 when he asked us to arrange a rented room in Mumbai so that he could come here and complete a course in software certification. Since I stay at Antop Hill in Mumbai and Naqi at Byculla, we spoke to some agents and arranged a room for him,” Nadeem had told police.
 

    Police said that after reaching Mumbai Yasin asked Naqi to get a SIM card for him and two other cards for his two friends on forged documents. Nadeem told police that Yasin was a soft-spoken, polite and intellectual man who had a broad thinking on all the issues especially religion. “He never spoke against any individual and would always give rational answers whenever asked to,” Nadeem is learnt to have to told the police. 

 

Naqi Ahmed
(22) has two leather units, one in Delhi and the other in Byculla. Naqi allegedly stole one of the scooters in which a bomb was planted later

Nadeem Akhtar
(23), an Antop Hill resident, was arrested on January 12, 2012, in the same SIM card forgery case Naqi was booked in. Nadeem is alleged to have ferried explosives from Delhi to Mumbai and stolen one of the scooters 

 

The Times of India, August 31, 2013