HC directs SIT to trace ‘absconding’ Mecca blast accused

Two years after Shaikh Abdul Nayeem, the alleged Lashkar-e-Taiba militant involved in the 2007 Mecca Masjid blast and the 2006 Aurangabad arms haul case, allegedly escaped police custody, the Bombay high court has directed Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe the incident and trace him.

The court also directed the SIT to submit a report on its probe by October 24. The team, which will be headed by headed by CBI joint director from Chhattisgarh, will also include Chhattisgarh, and West Bengal’s Directors General of Police, and the Chief of the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad.

The directions came while a bench of Justices Naresh Patil and PD Naik were hearing a plea filed in 2015 by Nayeem’s mother Nasreen alleging that “the agencies were withholding information about Nayeem’s true whereabouts.”

The court had earlier issued notices to the state government, the CBI, the railway police and the West Bengal and Chhattisgarh government seeking an explanation on the same but are yet to get a satisfactory reply.

Nasreen also claimed that the agencies might be lying about Nayeem’s escape and he might even have been killed in custody.

Nayeem, a resident of Aurangabad, was in the custody of the Bengal Armed Force on August 25, 2014, when he was being brought to the Mumbai sessions court from Dum Dum prison in WB through the Howrah-Mumbai Express. He allegedly managed to escape from the running train near Raigarh railway station in Chhattisgarh.

The cops claimed he jumped off the train between Kharsiya and Sakti stations in Chhattisgarh at about 5.45 am while seven policemen were escorting him to Mumbai. Nayeem’s family also claims that he was suffering from a kidney ailment that had made him “physically weak” and thus, it is very unlikely that he managed to escape despite being unhealthy.