As the Thane police verify the credentials of 11 men from Mumbra detained in Tripura, residents of the area are angry and confused. They say they can’t understand why security agencies have held the group, which had gone on a 40-day Tabliq-e-Jamat trip (to conduct religious discourses) to Kamalpur in Tripura, and are now questioning them in connection with last Tuesday’s serial blasts in Mumbai.

The group, initially with 12 members, they said, had left Mumbra on June 17 and was to return to Kalyan on July 31. Shamim Engineer, Aamir of the Jamat in Mumbra asks: ‘‘When they were not here, how are they being connected to the blasts? They went on our directions. Why are we not being questioned?’’

Denying reports that one of the 12 in the group had escaped from Tripura and was absconding, Engineer introduced a man called Faisal Ansari and claimed he was the twelfth man. ‘‘I stayed at a mosque with the others at Kamalpur till July 8 and returned on July 11 at 11 pm. I came back as I had fractured my collar bone and needed treatment. In the last two days, I have presented myself thrice before the police and recorded my statement,’’ says Ansari. Ansari runs Vision Tutorials, a coaching class centre.

The Jamat heads in Mumbra say that when such groups travel to far-off places, it is common for intelligence and security agencies to conduct preliminary inquiries. But this is the first time that its members have been detained. ‘‘We have learnt that the team had informed the BSF outpost there but not the local police. Maybe that’s the reason they are being suspected,’’ says Shakeelbhai, a senior Jamat member. When told about reports that the group was caught trying to cross the border, he said: ‘‘If that was their intention, they wouldn’t have been carrying return tickets.’’

... contd.