On the afternoon of March 1, during the busy lunch hour at The Rameshwaram Cafe, a popular restaurant in Brookefield in Bengaluru’s Information Technology corridor, a low intensity IED bomb exploded leaving nine people injured.
The Bengaluru City Police, armed with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and a partial image of the suspected bomber’s face, launched a manhunt scouring footage from hundreds of CCTV cameras. Even as the episode triggered political slugfest ahead of the Lok Sabha elections 2024, the Karnataka government handed over the investigation to the National Investigation Agency (NIA).
The trail that began in Bengaluru crisscrossed through several cities in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu to end in West Bengal. On April 12, in a significant breakthrough, the NIA arrested Mussavir Hussain Shazib, 30, the alleged bomber, and Abdul Matheen Ahmed Taahaa, 30, chief conspirator of the blast near Kolkata, West Bengal.
Hussain and Taha, residents of Tirthahalli, Shivamogga, are accused in multiple terror cases and have been on the run from agencies since 2020. The duo first came to the notice of security agencies when the Karnataka police busted the Al-Hind terror module inspired by the Islamic State (IS) in Bengaluru’s Suddaguntepalya in January, 2020.
The module was allegedly put together by Mehboob Pasha, who ran the Al-Hind Trust in the city, and Khaja Moideen, from Cuddalore, Tamil Nadu.
