City police seek NIA, IB help to check if Delhi bomb blast suspects have visited Coimbatore

COIMBATORE: Following the car blast in New Delhi, the Coimbatore city police and Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) have approached the National Investigation Agency (NIA), New Delhi, and the Intelligence Bureau (IB) to check if the blast suspects had visited Coimbatore or not."Suicide bomber Jamesha Mubeen, a self-styled ISIS operative in the city, died after a car bomb went off in front of the Kottai Sangameswarar temple in the city on Oct 23, 2022, and the NIA claimed that it was a lone wolf attack. The NIA arrested 17 suspects so far in connection with the bomb blast case. In November 2022, a cooker bomb blast was reported at Mangaluru in Karnataka, and the prime suspect Mohammed Shariq visited Coimbatore and a few other places in Tamil Nadu before executing the cooker blast.

So, we are on a high alert. We have approached the NIA and the IB to get the details of the suspects in connection with the New Delhi car blast to know whether they visited Coimbatore city earlier or not," said a senior officer with the city police.The Coimbatore city police have been using Octopus, a special software, to store the data of the suspects. "As of now, 140 people, who are possibly radicalised, are under the close watch of the Coimbatore city police.

Social media posts have been closely monitored by the media monitoring cell of the police," the officer said.The city police are collecting the details of unclaimed cars and other vehicles parked in streets for many months to remove them immediately.ATS sources also confirmed that they were in touch with the NIA to collect the details of the seven suspects in Delhi blast case.