Investigators had earlier found several pieces of CCTV footage of one of the suspect, Musavir Hussain Shazib, but his face remained covered by the cap
CHENNAI: Two suspects in the
Rameshwaram Cafe bomb blast
in Bengaluru on March 1 were spotted in Chennai in Jan, a special branch CID police team in Tamil Nadu has reported to Bengaluru police.
A cap that one of the suspects, Musavir Hussain
Shazib
, was wearing helped police identify the duo after CCTV images showed their faces before they bought the cap.
Soon after the blast that injured 10 people at the cafe near Whitefield in Bengaluru, National Investigation Agency (
NIA
) had recovered the cap. Now, the Tamil Nadu team has found that Shazib and his aide Abdil Mathern
Taha
had bought the cap from a mall in Mylapore in Chennai and stayed in a lodge at Triplicane.
Earlier, investigators had found several pieces of CCTV footage of the suspect, but his face remained covered by the cap.
Zooming in on the image, NIA sleuths had noted down the serial number on the cap and tracked it to a shop in the mall that sold it in Jan.
“The cap was of a limited edition which was sold only to about 400 people in the southern states,” said an officer.
“CCTV footage from the mall on the day of purchase showed Shazib and Taha, residents of Thirthahalli in Karnataka, and part of a Shivamogga IS module.”
“The two men stayed in a lodge in Triplicane here in Jan and Feb using fake IDs before heading to Andhra Pradesh,” said a police officer who shared the details with Bengaluru police and NIA. Shazib and Taha are wanted in a 2020 NIA case as well.
NIA officials have also collected hair strands from the cap recovered in Bengaluru and sent them for forensic test. NIA team plans to compare the DNA with that of Shazib’s close family members.
Meanwhile, SD-SBCID officials in Tamil Nadu are investigating if Shazib and Taha procured explosives from there.
