NIA Arrests Computer Engineer in Bengaluru Rameshwaram Cafe Blast Case

Bengaluru: The National Investigation Agency (NIA) arrested a computer engineer, Shoaib Ahmed Mirza alias Chhotu (35), on Friday for his alleged involvement in Bengaluru’s Rameshwaram Cafe blast.

Shoaib from Hubbali city in Karnataka is the fifth person to be arrested in the case.

Shoaid was sentenced to five years of rigorous imprisonment in 2016 in a case related to a conspiracy hatched by Pakistan-based terror organisations Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Harkat-ul-Jihad-al Islami (HuJI) in 2012 to carry out targeted killings of in Bengaluru and Hubbali to disturb communal harmony.

“Three days after a massive crackdown across four states in the Rameshwaram Cafe blast case, the NIA on Friday arrested one more accused, identified as an ex-convict in an LeT terror conspiracy case,” a statement issued by the NIA said.

The NIA took over the Rameshwaram Cafe blast case on March 3. On April 12, the NIA arrested two key accused including the  mastermind Adbul Matheen Ahmed Taahaa and Mussavir Hussain Shazib from Kolkata. The co-accused Maaz Muneer Ahmed and Muzammil Shareef, a resident of Khalsa in Karnataka’s Chikkamagaluru, were also arrested by the NIA. They said in 2018, Shoib befriended and introduced Taahaa to an “online handler”. Shoib provided an e-mail address for encrypted communication between the handler and mastermind of the café attack, Abdul Ahmad Taahaa.