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Madras police seize 11 bombs, arrest 6 Al-Umma activists

The Madras police today averted a major disaster by seizing 11 bombs, together weighing three kg, from a well in a house at Pulianthope and arrested six extremists, including Tahjuddin, vice-president of the banned Al-Umma at Tambaram on the outskirts of the city.

The seizure and arrests follows the interrogation of four of the five extremists arrested in a Vadapalani flat two weeks ago in the wake of the seizure of a huge cache of explosives and detonators.

City Police Commissioner P Kalimuthu told newspersons that the extremists had planned to set off the bombs at various places in the city.

Apart from Tahjuddin, who hailed from Palakkad in Kerala, the arrested were: Shahul Hamid, Abbas, Sadiq, Mohammed Hasan and Shafiullah.

He said two others, Zakir Hussain, who had brought the explosives to the Pulianthope house, and Bilal, the house owner, were being interrogated.

The interrogation of the four extremists had also led to the seizure of two boxes each containing explosives weighing 25 kg from a stream near a private amusement park at suburban Tambaram, and 50 kg explosives from Ariyapakkam lake in suburban Perungalathur during the last two days.

The extremists had dumped the explosives into the stream and the lake fearing a police crackdown, he added.

Kalimuthu said the interrogation of the four extremists revealed that one of them, Basheer, was the same person who had fled the scene when accosted by the Tambaram police on February 9. Two rexine bags containing 14 bombs and 750 detonators had been recovered from his sports cycle, he added.

He said the interrogation also revealed that the four extremists, along with Arifa Begum, who was now in judicial custody, had been part of the conspiracy behind the serial blasts which had rocked Coimbatore on February 14.

Replying to a question, he said the hunt for two extremists, Mohammed Usman and his wife, Ayesha alias Sangeeta, was still on.

UNI

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