After an investigation spanning 42 days within the Rameshwaram Cafe blast case, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) arrested the 2 accused — Mussavir Hussain Shazib and Abdul Matheen Taaha — from West Bengal on Friday.

“It is a vital improvement for intelligence companies and the NIA. They adopted a sample for 42 days which the companies had been monitoring,” said sources, adding the duo only stayed in guesthouses and private lodges where verification is not forced.

A courtroom later gave the central company a three-day transit remand of the 2 males.

The accused are residents of Thirthahalli in Karnataka’s Shivamogga district. Shazib had placed the Improvised Explosive Device (IED) at the cafe and Tahaa was the mastermind behind the planning and execution of the blast, the officials said.

NEW CCTV FOOTAGE SHOWS ACCUSED AT A KOLKATA GUEST HOUSE

A day after the arrest of Shazib and Tahaa, new CCTV footage of the two accused has emerged. The two can be seen checking into a guest house, said to be situated in Kolkata’s Ekbalpur.

Shazib and Tahaa had checked into this guest house on March 25 and stayed there for three days. They had told the staffers that they were tourists, belonging to Karnataka and Maharashtra.

The receptionist of the hotel, Ashraf Ali, told news agency ANI, “They came on 25th March and showed their Identity cards, and we provided them a room. They checked out from the Hotel on 28th March. When the officials from NIA arrived, they went through the entry register and started an investigation.”

“We don’t present meals contained in the Hotel, so each of them used to exit to have meals. They paid in money and booked just one room. Both of them used their regional language to speak with one another,” Ali added.

ACCUSED USED HINDU NAMES AS ALIASES

Said to be the mastermind behind the Bengaluru cafe blast, Abdul Matheen Taha had also used Hindu names as aliases at various locations for accommodation. Even the wanted poster for the accused noted that “he has been using Hindu identity documents, forging names such as Vignesh or other similar forged ID documents”.

Before their arrest, the 2 had been placing up in a lodge in New Digha for the previous 4 days. They had switched a number of places in Bengal.

Shazib had used a pretend Aadhaar card of 1 Yusha Shahnawaz Patel from Maharashtra’s Palghar on the two Kolkata lodges. While Tahaa had used pretend names resembling Vignesh BD from Karnataka at one resort and Anmol Kulkarni in one other.

Then once more at one other resort, they took the identities of Sanjay Agarwal and Uday Das, hailing from Jharkhand and Tripura respectively, Times of India reported.

While Tahaa is an IT engineer, it’s suspected that Shazib is a key particular person in influencing the Islamic State’s (IS) Shivamogga-based module.

Investigators consider Taahaa used the cryptocurrency path to finance the operation, CNN-News18 has learnt. Some digital devices and about 70 articles had been seized from the 2 males, the company had mentioned in courtroom.

Some reviews mentioned that Shazib, Tahaa and one other suspect — Shareef — all related to ISIS modules, had been additionally concerned within the Shivamogga graffiti case in addition to the Mangaluru cooker blast case reported in November 2023.

NIA had declared rewards of Rs 10 lakh on info resulting in the arrest of every particular person on the run on March 29.

The NIA, central intelligence companies and state police companies of West Bengal, Telangana, Karnataka and Kerala coordinated for the arrests, PTI reported.