Patna serial blasts: One more terror suspect arrested

Terror suspect Meher Alam has been detained as sleuths raided several places in Bihar to hunt down those who unleashed a string of bombings that left six dead, police said on Thursday.

The National Investigation Agency (NIA) intensified the search for terror suspects and carried out raids at several places in the state since Wednesday, police said.

Six of the seven blasts took place on Sunday at Patna's Gandhi Maidan before Bharatiya Janata Party's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi was to address a rally. The seventh explosion was at the railway station.

Police officials said that NIA detained terror suspect Meher Alam, 25, from Darbhanga.

"The NIA team raided at least two places in Muzaffarpur and three places in Darbhanga districts since Wednesday in search of terror suspect involved in serial blasts in Patna," a police official said.

More raids would be conducted in next few days.

NIA officials also searched the Muzaffarpur house of another terror suspect Mohammad Aftab, who was arrested from Delhi.

The NIA team seized some documents and a laptop from his house, said an official.

The NIA officials along with Intelligence Bureau officials continued to interrogate two of three arrested terror suspects Mohammad Imtiaz Ansari and Arshad Alam.

Patna Senior Superintendent of Police Manu Maharaj said Imtiaz along with Arshad came to Patna between Oct 8 and 10 to carry out recce of various sites that could be targeted.

Arshad Alam, 24, a resident of East Champaran district's Alauli village, was arrested by a team of NIA and Bihar Police on Tuesday.

"Arshad was arrested on the basis of information provided by Mohammad Imtiaz Ansari, one of the two suspected Indian Mujahideen operatives arrested from Patna junction soon after the first bomb exploded," a police official said.

A second terror suspect who was injured in the blasts is battling for life at a government hospital.

Imtiaz, a resident of Ranchi, is suspected to be the brain behind the blasts. He was arrested from the Patna railway junction after a bomb exploded in a toilet on platform No.10 on Sunday morning.

Ainul alias Tarique, the second suspect, was apprehended while he was crying in pain at the Patna railway junction toilet soon after a bomb which he was trying to fit with a timer exploded.