Al Ummah man,2 others held for Bangalore blast

Bukhari was in prison for about a decade,till he was released about a year ago.

A resident of Pattamadai near Melapalayam in Tirunelveli district,Bukhari was arrested from Madurai,the Bangalore police said. The other two persons who have been arrested have been identified as Peer Mohiddeen alias Peer,39,and Basheer alias Sunnath Basheer,30,from Melapalayam,Tirunelveli.

Sources familiar with the investigation said all three persons were only involved in providing logistical support for the attack and that the person who planted the device had not been nabbed so far.

While the role of a former Al Ummah member has been detected in the attack,officials refrained from calling the entire attack as an Al Ummah affair.

“Support has been drawn to obtain the motorcycle from the arrested persons but the attack has been carried out by someone else and we do not know the antecedents of the bomb planter. Whether it is someone who also carried out the recent attacks in Hyderabad and other places is still a matter of investigation,’’ said the sources.

Bukhari was earlier also accused in the bombing of an RSS office in Chennai in 1993. There has been speculation that the April 17 attack on the BJP office is linked to the incarceration of Kerala PDP leader Abdul Nasser Madani in the July 2008 Bangalore serial bombings case but senior police officials denied this.

Madani was also among the accused in the Coimbatore case as an abettor but was released after the charges against him were not proven in the case.

Sources said the investigations so far in the Hyderabad and Bangalore cases seemed to suggest the revival of several old terror outfits in an effort to gain logistical support bases for terrorist activities.