The Coimbatore police on Thursday, October 27, arrested a sixth person in connection with the cylinder explosion that occurred earlier on Sunday, October 23. Afsar Khan, a relative of Jamesha Mubin who was killed in the blast, was arrested in the case. Police had earlier said that they had seized around 75 kg of materials including potassium nitrate, aluminium powder, charcoal and sulphur used in making explosives, from Mubin’s house. They now suspect that some of these substances were procured online from e-commerce websites like Amazon and Flipkart, The Hindu reported.
Suspecting that the materials were procured in small quantities over several months, the police have reportedly sought information from e-commerce companies on deliveries of potassium nitrate, sulphur etc. to Coimbatore and surrounding areas over the past couple of years. On Thursday, searches continued at several houses in Azath Nagar, Karumbukadai, Pullukadu, Podanur and Kuniyamuthur areas of Coimbatore by 10 police teams accompanied by bomb detection and disposal squads.
Police had earlier arrested five other persons, and invoked the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act against them, in connection with the cylinder explosion which occurred around 4 am on October 23. The explosion occurred in a car near Kottai Eswaran Temple in the busy and communally sensitive Ukkadam area in Coimbatore. Jamesha Mubin, a 28-year-old engineering graduate who was travelling in the car, was killed in the incident. The explosion happened while he was trying to move past the temple and had allegedly tried to evade a police check post.
Based on CCTV footage which showed a group of men carrying a gunny bag from Mubin’s house hours before the explosion, police arrested five persons on Monday – Muhammad Talka, Muhammed Azharuddin, Muhammed Riyaz, Firoze Ismail and Muhammed Nawaz Ismail. On Wednesday, the Tamil Nadu government said that an NIA probe into the case would be recommended to the union government.