MUMBAI: A day after arresting five persons accused of being the Indian Mujahideen module behind many of the terror strikes in the country since 2005, the Mumbai Crime Branch on Thursday questioned the brother of the detained IM co-founder Mohammad Sadiq Shaikh and a doctor at whose house Mohammad Arif Shaikh, the bomb circuit maker who too was arrested on Wednesday, stayed in Mumbra.

While Sadiqs brother Mohammad Tariq Shaikh, who too is a techie, was called to the Crime Branch office in Lower Parel, the doctor was questioned in Mumbra itself.

"We wanted to clear some doubts about the arrested persons, hence Tariq and the doctor was called for questioning and let off," said joint commissioner of police Rakesh Maria, who heads the crime branch.

Maria said the five arrested on Wednesday, Sadiq, Arif, Mohammed Afzal Usmani, who allegedly planted the car bombs in Ahmedabad and Surat, Mohammad Zakir Shaikh and Mohammad Ansar Shaikh, would be subjected to polygraph, brain mapping and narco-analysis tests.

"We have got few more names about the group members and efforts are on to nab them," he added.

Asked what leads the police had got on the terror emails sent before the blasts in Uttar Pradesh, Jaipur, Ahmedabad and New Delhi, Maria said "IMs communications and dispatch of explosives were handled by one of the core co-founders, Roshan Khan alias Riyaz Bhatkal.

Bhatkal would know the person who had been sending e-mails." Maria said Bhatkal, Sadiq and Atif, who was killed in the encounter at Jamia Nagar in New Delhi, were the three lynchpins of the IM. Explaining the hierarchy of IM, Maria said Lashkar-e-Taiba chief Abu Qama controlled Amir Raza (both operate in Pakistan), who in turn controlled Sadiq, Atif and Bhatkal.

Sadiq, who had visited Pakistan twice in 2001 and 2005 had been in touch with Bhatkal, who is reported to be in Pakistan. The explosives used in the blasts were sourced from Karnataka.

And it was Bhatkal who directed Afzal to steal the vehicles to carry out blasts in Ahmedabad and Surat. Maria revealed that the police had actually arrested Afzal in August itself in a car theft case. His interrogation had led to the busting of the alleged IM terror module.

Maria said IM module members used aliases to communicate with their local operatives. "In Ahmedabad Atif was using an alias as Bashar, while his accomplice Qayamuddin Kapadia [who is absconding] was known as Rizwan," he said.

The Crime Branch would hand over all five accused to the state Anti-Terrorism Squad since they were involved in the 117 serial blasts case. The group was planning to trigger blasts at "crowded areas" in the city and had surveyed areas, the police said without naming specific targets.

"We would be filing a supplementary chargesheet in the case 117 case, after collecting evidence regarding the source of explosives, the Wi-Fi mystery and the remaining accused in the case," Maria said.

Source : DNA