Daijiworld Media Network – Mangalore (VM)
 
Mangalore, Sep 2: Security has been intensified in Karnataka, particularly in coastal areas, after a terror alert was sounded by the intelligence agencies.
 
Sources said that fishing boats coming from other districts and states are being closely monitored.
 
During the interrogation, it is learnt that the two journalists Vishveshwara Bhat, Pratap Sinha and Hubli Bajrang Dal leader Ganu Jartarkar were the main targets. 
 
It was also reported that the suspects had planned to target MP Prahalad Joshi, Vijay Sankeshwar, Kalladka Prabhakar Bhat along with several others.

Suspects had No Terror Record

Bangalore, Sep 1 (DHNS): Senior officials handling the investigations into the alleged Bangalore-Hubli terror plot have said that the arrested men were not involved in terror-related incidents previously.

Police Commissioner B G Jyothi Prakash Mirji told mediapersons on Saturday that preliminary investigations indicated that the suspects had no other targets except a columnist with a Kannada daily. The youths were rounded up when they were about to execute their plan, he claimed.

The probe is continuing at various undisclosed locations in the City, police said. Senior police officials say the editor of the Kannada daily where the columnist worked, Prahlad Joshi, BJP MP from Dharwad as well as a media baron and BJP MLC, were their next possible targets.

Mirji said police had retrieved photographs and other information about the three targets from the laptops seized from the suspects.

“Police have so far seized from the suspects one foreign-made 7.65mm pistol along with seven cartridges, 16 mobile phones, eight SIMs, four ATM cards, three pen drives, two laptops, a Hero Honda Splendor motorbike, a dagger, seven books on jihad, two maps of Chennai and one each of India and Iran, some Urdu paper clippings and Rs 1,500 in cash,” the commissioner said.

The seized laptops and mobile phones have been sent for forensic analysis, he added.

Police also said that on the basis of information provided by the suspects, the CCB sleuths had, on August 31, taken into custody Obedulla-Ur-Rehman, 21, in Hyderabad and brought him to Bangalore. He and others had allegedly conspired to kill two corporators and a prominent leader of a Hindu organisation in the capital of Andhra Pradesh.

Asked about the recent arrests of suspected terrorists in Nanded, Maharashtra, Bangalore police said they had no role in it. They, however, declined to comment on whether the suspects arrested in Nanded had any links with the youths arrested in Bangalore.