NEW DELHI, Oct 28: The landlady of the alleged Pakistani terrorists who were apparently planning to attack high profile buildings in Karnataka has said the men were picked up by the police a fortnight ago, not caught in an encounter on Friday as officially claimed, the Indian Express said on Saturday.
Mohammed Ali Hussain and Mohammed Koya Fahad, said to be members of Pakistan-based Al-Badr group, were claimed by Karnataka police to have been caught on Friday after a gun battle with them. Police said they had foiled a terror plot by the two residents of Karachi, targeting Bangalore, the country’s IT hub, and an imposing building housing the state secretariat and legislature there.
“The owners of the house where they stayed said a police team had picked them up a fortnight ago,” the Express reported.
According to the report the landlady, Kanthamma Ravikumar, of the Rajeev Nagar house, on the outskirts of Mysore, where the two alleged militants stayed since Aug 16 this year offered a contrary account to the police version.
She said: “The person called Mohammed Koya rented our house and signed the rent agreement. Some plain-clothed policemen took him away around 15 days ago, along with the person we knew as Ali. We did not hear of them since then. Only on Friday morning when they were brought here that we realised they could have been terrorists.”
Her teenage son Avinash said the house had been rented out to Koya after he was brought by an acquaintance of nearly five years. If the landlady’s version is correct it would be the second major embarrassment for India’s anti-terror campaign within a month. Recently the Police Chief in Mumbai had claimed to have solved the terror attack on packed trains in the city.
However, seven of the men charged in the train blasts case refuted his claim that they had confessed to their role in the crime.
