ATS insiders say Yasin Bhatkal and his arrested brother Abdul look alike, making it impossible to make out who planted bomb at Pune cafe from hazy CCTV footage
ATS insiders say Yasin Bhatkal and his arrested brother Abdul look alike, making it impossible to make out who planted bomb at Pune cafe from hazy CCTV footage
A DAY after the precision operation to catch and whisk away Abdul Samad Bhatkal from the Mangalore airport on Monday, Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) sources said there was no confirmation yet that it was Abdul who was involved in the German Bakery blast.
They said it could as well be Abdul's brother Yasin the CCTV images are too hazy to know for sure, and the brothers resemble each other a lot.
They said the visuals captured by the 1.2 mega-pixel CCTV camera in German Bakery and the grab taken from the camera in Hotel O in the adjacent lane show a person, who bears a faint resemblance with suspected Indian Mujahideen operative Yasin Bhatkal alias Ahmed Siddibappa.
Or, for that matter, with Abdul Bhatkal.
Yasin, believed to have been involved in making bombs and playing a key role in a series of terror attacks in 2007 and 2008, has fled the country.
The investigative agencies tracked four lakh calls made from Koregaon Park from landlines and cellphones on February 13 and cross-checked the identity of people who made the calls with people captured on CCTV footage.
"We interrogated the suspects and it involved people from Karnataka, but we could not trace one person," said the official.
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"The person in the image looks like a man in his twenties, which could be Abdul, who is 22."
While Yasin is much older, still the quality of the image is so poor that ATS officials do not want to reach an iron-clad conclusion about the age of the bomb planter.
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The officer added that they needed to interrogate Abdul reaching any conclusion.
4 lakh
Calls made from Koregaon Park from landlines and cellphones on February 13, the day of the blast.
| Who is Bhatkal? |
| Abdul Samad Bhatkal was allegedly working for Chhota Shakeel. He had allegedly supplied Chinese arms to Chhota Shakeel. Abdul and three of his accomplices were arrested in Mumbai in 2009, said ATS officials in the city. |
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