Acting on an official tip-off from Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal Police on Saturday morning arrested a 26-year-old Kolkata electricity corporation employee for his alleged involvement in the serial blasts that rocked civil courts in Lucknow, Varanasi and Faizabad last month.

Officials claimed that they suspected Aftab Alam Ansari, who was picked up from the northern fringes of the city, to be a HuJI militant. However, Aftab’s family, after coming to know of his arrest from TV channels on Saturday, claimed that he had been missing since Thursday — they added that he had nothing to do with the blasts and had been “framed”.

“We have been informed by the STF (Uttar Pradesh’s Special Task Force) about Aftab’s involvement in the Wazirganj blast (on November 23). We are still investigating if he had links with any terrorist outfit,” said Rajiv Kumar, DIG, CID (Operations), West Bengal.

CID sources said that a mobile phone was found on Aftab when local police picked him up from Dunlop area, about five kilometres from his Cossipore residence. Earlier, Kolkata police had picked up Ritesh Singh, another resident of the area, but let him go after questioning. However, Aftab’s brother Wahid Alam Ansari said the last time his family saw him was when Aftab left the house on December 27 at 11 am for office on his bicycle. “He had a 2 pm-10 pm shift that day but he left early because he wanted to buy a few things,” said Wahid. When Aftab failed to return that night, and neighbours found that his mobile had been switched off, residents of the area lodged a “missing complaint” with local police the next day.

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