An eerie silence fills the narrow 50-feet lane, flanked by old bookstores. Steel barricades, with the word 'kaaval' (police), are placed just 10 meters from the entrance of the road leading to Kottai Easwaran Temple at Kottaimedu near Ukkadam in Coimbatore. A few men and women are seen walking with stainless steel milk pots in their hands. “Today is an auspicious day. The day our lord Muruga killed the evil demon. We are coming back after offering prayers at the Kottai Easwaran Temple,” tells Renuka Sathiyamurthy. As they walk out of the lane, a few young girls approach one of the bookstores, searching for an accountancy book. As they look ahead of the road, one girl murmurs, “This was the place of the blast.” Immediately, the other two girls look at Kottai Easwarn Temple, a small yet popular Shiva shrine in the locality. Sounds of bells fill the air as the girls walk near the temple.
It was right in front of the temple that a car blast happened on October 23, a day before Diwali, killing 28-year old Jamesha Mubin. An engineering graduate, Mubin had driven the explosives-laden car—loaded with two gas cylinders and high-intensity explosives, nails, and ball bearings—which blasted.
A day later, five people were arrested in connection with the blast—Mohammad Thalka (25), Mohammad Asarudheen (25) of Ukkadam; Mohammad Riyaz (27), Feroz Ismail (27) and Mohammad Navaz Ismail (27) of GM Nagar in Coimbatore. Two days later, another person, Afsar Khan, who was in close contact with Mubin, was also arrested. All six were detained under UAPA and the investigation was handed over to the National Investigation Agency (NIA) as there were suspicions of a terror plot and a plan to attack a few temples in Coimbatore.
Mubin had plans for lone wolf attack on the most popular Koniyamman temple in Coimbatore. The plan was hatched in 2018 itself.
“The 2019 Sri Lanka Easter bombings underscored the cross-strait links between Sri Lankan and Tamil Nadu-based Islamists. Now, the death of a man driving an explosives-laden car in Coimbatore and the arrest of five of his associates suggest that violent jihadism remains a problem,” tweeted geopolitical strategist and author Brahma Chellaney.
Chellaney’s tweet was exactly the information sent out by the state intelligence in its notes, several times since 2018 to the Central agencies. The link between the Sri Lanka Easter bombings and the Coimbatore car blast is strongly established based on the raw materials recovered from Mubin’s house. The FIR registered by the NIA says a total of 109 articles, including potassium nitrate, black powder, matchbox, cracker fuse for a length of about 2 m, nitroglycerin, red phosphorus, pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN) powder, aluminum powder, portable oxygen cylinder, sulfur powder, glass marbles, gas regulator, batteries, wires, iron nails, switch, insulation tape, packing tape, gloves, notebooks on Islamic ideology and details about jihad, were recovered from Mubin’s house.
PETN is a high-explosive substance used only by the military. This is the substance, according to sources, used by the extremists world over to blast huge planes. It can be procured only from the black market. However, sources in the investigating agencies told THE WEEK that a huge quantity of PETN can’t be procured online. Even in the black market, only small quantities—20 to 50 grams—can be purchased at a time.
Sources say Mubin had purchased PETN in small quantities and stored it in his house. Highly volatile substances like glycerine were also recovered from his house say sources.
“The investigation is with NIA. It is for the agency to investigate his links in foreign countries and if there was a terror plot,” says Commissioner of Police V. Balakrishnan. During the investigations in the first two days, he says the Coimbatore Police searched several houses and arrested six persons suspected to be involved in the crime and were in contact with Mubin.
Who is Mubin?
A few weeks ago, when he was seen unloading a few boxes from an auto rickshaw into his rented house, the house owner got suspicious and intercepted him. “He told me that it was books, and he had got it to sell,” says the house owner, who wants to remain anonymous. He too was taken to the local police station and several other investigating officers for enquiry. Mubin had moved into the rental house only in June. Three weeks before the incident, he had dropped his hearing and speech-impaired wife and two daughters at his in-laws' place at Ukkadam, saying he will be travelling for work.
Mubin used to work in Honey Idayathullah’s shop. Idhayathullah is one of the accused arrested by the NIA after the Easter bombings in Sri Lanka, along with Mohammed Azarudhin. His earnings were very meager. His marriage with a speech and hearing-impaired girl was part of the attempts to earn sympathy from the community and avoid any suspicions, say investigating agencies.
Mubin never attended prayer meetings in the Jamat. “He would stand out till the namaz gets over and get in to pray alone. He was warned several times for this,” says Kovai Faizal, joint secretary of Sunnath Jamath Federation. When elders in the community and in the mosque questioned him for his behaviour and warned him, he avoided going to the mosque for namaz and offered prayers alone at home. Often, he was joined by his cousins Afsar Khan and Muhammad Azharudin who are also under investigation. He was a very staunch believer and always preached that people who follow other religions are kafir (infidels).
He never used to consult a modern medical practitioner for any medical condition. When he had chest pain and suspected that it could lead to a heart attack, Mubin went to Ernakulam in Kerala for unani treatment. When once his daughter fell sick with a severe cough and cold, he asked his wife to give the child country medicines at home and not to visit a doctor.
Only once, two months ago, when he had an issue with his eyesight, he went to a private hospital in Coimbatore for surgery as an outpatient. For this surgery and for traveling to Ernakulam for treatment, Mubin borrowed money from two of his businessmen relatives who are also under investigation. His income stopped after Honey Idhayathullah was arrested.
On Independence Day, Mubin had gone to his in-laws' place, where he had left his wife and children. The house owner who lives on the ground floor had hoisted the national flag. He got upset with this and pulled it down and threw the flag into a nearby drain. The house owner, who had no idea who removed the flag, hoisted another one. Mubin pulled it down again and got into an argument with the house owner.
His diary contained several details, including his love for Islam, Jihad, a flowchart of gods of various religions, details of the citizenship amendment act, news about the hijab row in Karnataka, PFI raids, his feelings about the growing Islamophobia in India, and information on making bombs. He did not use any physical learning materials and most of his learning happened online, say sources.
“We don’t suspect him to be a suicide bomber. If so, he would have not left any traces back home. But we cannot conclude before investigation,” says a senior officer who is part of the investigation.
However, the investigation team suspects that Mubin was on his way to the target and blasted the car as he saw a police check post.
The police constable at the e-beat, just 100 meters away from the Kottai Eastern temple in Ukkadam, had punched out just 15 minutes before the blast. The street was empty. The CCTV footage in the locality was taken for investigation. Mubin’s telephone contacts and bank account details are also being scrutinised to trace his handlers abroad. “He should have been funded by external sources,” says a senior officer.
1998 bomb blasts in Coimbatore
Of the six arrested, a senior officer says questioning Mohammed Thalka and Afsar Khan led to several leads. Thalka, a CA graduate, is the son of Nawab Khan, the younger brother of the prime accused in the 1998 bomb blasts, S.A. Basha. Thalka had sold the car used by Mubin. The car had changed nine hands.
“He sold it for Rs 25,000 and got Rs 1,500 as profit. He was into used car sale business,” tells Thalka’s mother Hafsath Biwi. “I raised both my sons in such a way that they always stayed away from any controversy. My son would not get into even a minor altercation. He would not participate in any protest,” Biwi tells THE WEEK, sitting inside her two-room house tucked inside a narrow lane.
Her house is a mess with things strewn all over. The police searched the house twice. “There is nothing to trace here. There is only garbage,” she tells. Biwi says she was struggling to make both ends meet after Khan was arrested in the 1998 bomb blast case. “We have always felt the pain in the family. So my sons will not go for any anti-social activity.”
However, police sources confirm that Thalka confessed to giving the car free of cost to Mubin. “Thalka and Mubin were known to each other,” says the officer. During the interrogation, although he denied having any links to Mubin initially, Thalka is said to have confessed later.
Not just Thalka, Afsar Khan, and four others, sources in the investigation agencies say that there are at least 60 Muslim youths linked to the families of the 1998 blasts who are on their radar now. The activities of the former Al Umma members and their families, sources say, are being closely monitored.
Incidentally, the kin of S.A. Basha and the second accused in the 1998 bomb blast case, Mohammad Ansari, who was brought out from prison to the government general hospital in Coimbatore for an angioplasty on the day of the car blast was rushed back. “The police took him away even before he could get normal,” his wife Samsunisa tells THE WEEK. “He used to come out on parole and meet us once in a while. But with this, even the chances of parole are very less,” laments Samsunisa.
A long walk from Samsunisa’s house in Kuniamuthur to Ukkadam brings back the memories of the serial bomb blasts in Coimbatore in 1998 and the changing demography in the industrial city. Kottaimaedu in Ukkadam, predominantly a Muslim area in Coimbatore, is sitting on a ticking bomb. “There might be a few radical elements in the community. For that reason, all of us can’t be looked at as fundamentalists. When a Hindu or a Christian commits a crime, it is not named with his religion. But when it’s a Muslim, it’ is labelled as Islamic fundamentalism,” points out M. Abdul Hakkim, one of the members of the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, associated with the federation of all Jamath in Coimbatore.
Most Muslim youths from Kottaimedu, Ukkadam region in Coimbatore, cannot get jobs in corporates or government offices, Hakkim claims, adding, they end up running small businesses. Besides, businesses like textile, and gold crafting which were once done by Muslims, are now done by Marwaris and Gujaratis who shifted to this region in the past two decades.
In her final judgment in the 1998 bomb blast case in the Madras High Court, Justice Prabha Sridevan quoted one of the convicts as saying how he had lost trust in the pillars of democracy. She quoted in the judgment, “A citizen should have trust and confidence over the various institutions of the state. The member of Parliament and the member of the legislative assembly, who are supposed to be secular, deviated from the normal course. Muslims feel that they live in the open jail with so much insecurity and restriction. Therefore, life in jail for the past 10 years made no difference. The serial explosions at Coimbatore were only the culmination of the failure on the part of the agencies of the state, police department, and judiciary.”
Along with the then Al Umma leaders, Basha, Ansari and Nawab Khan, 17 others were sentenced to life; one person got 13 years in prison and 22 others were acquitted by the Madras High Court bench in 2007. Of the 17 convicted, four have already died in prison while Basha, sources say has Parkinson's. The case involved 163 accused, 1,300 witnesses and nearly 2,000 material objects.
Though decades have passed by and there are no traces of Al Umma in Coimbatore, there is palpable anger against the pillars of democracy, which is used as a trigger by the external handlers trying to radicalise young men like Mubin. Besides, the recent PFI raids in Coimbatore and the arrest of a few prominent members of the PFI are again a trigger. According to the state intelligence report, the Muslim youth in Tamil Nadu, particularly Coimbatore and certain parts of Kerala, were radicalised based on Zahran Hassim’s online tutorial and the learning material he had shared before the Easter bombings.