The suitcases behind the Samjhauta train blasts were bought in Indore four days before the the incident took place on February 18 on the Attari Express near Panipat killing 68 persons. This was revealed after the police interrogated Faqruddin and Iqbal Hussain, the tailors who stitched the suitcase covers.

According to Faqruddin and Hussain, on the morning of February 14 Huzaifa Halim Ali gave them 14 metres of navy blue cloth for stitching the suitcase covers “on priority within a day”. Ali is the nephew of the owner of Abhinandan Bag Centre in Indore from where the six suitcases were bought. SP (Railways) Bharti Arora, part of the Haryana Police SIT, told The Indian Express that “some persons came to buy the 24-inch suitcases on February 14 morning from Abhinandan Bag Centre and that the covers were stitched within hours and also delivered the same day.”

Ali, along with his worker Puran Singh Thakur are under an eight-day police remand with the Haryana SIT for not co-operating with the police in the investigation. Arora said it was Hussain put the Apollo 600 pen marking on the covers as a tailor sign and that led the police hunt to Indore.

Panipat police have got both of them give a closed-door confession before a magistrate in Panipat.

Faqruddin’s tailoring shop is located just four shops away from Abhinandan Bag Centre.

He confessed to the police, “Ali came to my shop on February 14 morning with 14 metres of cloth and asked me to stitch the covers within a couple of hours. I ran out of this cloth and then put in some cloth on my own. My worker Hussain put Apollo 600 marks on the covers with a pen. But we never saw who bought the suitcases from Ali's shop as he gave the suitcases and then also took back the the covers himself.”

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