Hyderabad cops to grill terror suspect

A Hyderabad police team arrived in the city on Friday to interrogate Mohammed Yusuf Mullawala, a 35-year-old computer engineer from Andhra Pradesh deported from the US last week.

Mullawala is in the custody of Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) and the police team wants to know if he has links with terror outfits including Harkat-ul-Jehadi Islami. Mullawala is under arrest for allegedly tampering with his passport. He tore two pages of his passport, which would have shown if he had visited any other country during his stay in the US since 2002 till his deportation.

“We had informed the Hyderabad police about Mullawala and they have sent a team to interrogate him about his stay in that city, including the contacts he might have there,” said Additional Director General of Police and ATS chief Krish Pal Raghuvanshi.

There is a possibility that the police will seek extension of his remand that is till Saturday. “Mullawala did his junior college from Hyderabad. He would frequent the city even after enrolling for a computer course in Mumbai,” a senior ATS officer requesting anonymity told HT. “The Hyderabad police want to know the identity of his associates and his contacts there.”

The ATS has been grilling him to find out if he was “preparing” to become a “bomber” in a suspected terror attack involving chemical/biological agents.

The ATS also wants to find out who funded his US education as his father is a farmer. “How could Mullawala manage to send Rs 25 lakh to his family since 2002 ?” asked an ATS interrogator.

Mullawala, according to US authorities, had enrolled in a New York training course meant for driving vehicles laden with hazardous chemical/biological agents last year. He bunked his masters engineering courses at New York’s City University and Rhodes Island’s Johnson and Wells University.

But his hurry to acquire the training manual and learn ‘reverse driving’ in the very first week alerted the authorities. He paid $6,000 to get the training manual. He was arrested in December last year. He was grilled by the anti-terror branch of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. After a US court ordered Mullawala’s ‘removal’, he was deported to the country last Friday.