Coimbatore car blast: NIA interrogates three accused of raising funds for operation

NIA officers come out of a house in Coimbatore as part of a search conducted in the wake of the car blast in front of Sangameswarar temple on October 23, 2022. File photo
| Photo Credit: M. Periasamy

The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has begun interrogating three persons in their custody, who were arrested last month for their alleged involvement in the Coimbatore car blast.

The Special Court handling NIA cases at Poonamallee in Chennai granted six days’ custody of Coimbatore residents Aboo Hanifa, Saran Mariappan, and Pavas Rahman to the agency last week. The NIA sleuths will interrogate them in custody till November 14, said a source privy to the investigation.

Aboo Hanifa, Saran Mariappan, and Pavas Rahman were arrested for their alleged involvement in the funding of the car blast that occurred in front of Sangameswarar temple at Kottaimedu in Coimbatore on October 23, 2022.

As part of the interrogation, an NIA team is camping in Coimbatore with the trio. The team is expected to take the accused to various places for evidence collection and other procedures. 

According to the NIA, Hanifa was a faculty of Kovai Arabic College, where many of the accused involved in the terror attack were believed to have allegedly got radicalised into the ideologies of the Islamic State (IS).

The agency has so far arrested 18 accused in the case, out of which 14 have been charge-sheeted. Key accused Jamesha Mubeen, 29, an alleged self-styled Islamic State operative, who acted as the suicide bomber, died in the blast.