Pramesh S Jain
Continuing investigations into the money laundering and Hawala transactions,the Enforcement Directorate (ED) officials questioned the prime accused in the Mangaluru cooker blast case,Mohammad Shariq,at the central prison of Parappana Agrahara on Tuesday.
The ED officials earlier on August 5,had provisionally attached one movable property in the form of a bank balance of Rs.29,176,which was available in the account of Syed Yasin,one of the accused in the case,under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002.
The officials questioned Shariq about the source of the money they would get thorugh different channels and the details of the expenditure .
The ED probe found that a total of Rs.2.8 lakh was deposited by different cryptocurrency dealers in the mule accounts,and Rs.41,680 was collected in cash from PoS agents.
The said amounts were utilised for the purchase of the items online to assemble the IED and for hiring hideouts in Mysuru city and other places,and also for conducting recce at various places in Tamilnadu,Kerala and Karnataka,and specifically the above-mentioned bomb was supposed to be planted at Dharmasthala Manjunatha Swamy Temple.
It had exploded in the autorickshaw as the bomb timer was set as 09 seconds instead of 90 minutes.
Investigations conducted by the ED revealed that the ISIS online handler named ‘Colonel had given training over Wicker app/Telegram etc,to the main accused Mohammad Shariq alias Premraj and other accused persons,to make improvised explosive device (IED)/Bomb and also arranged funds through certain mule accounts and also through crypto currencies which were at times encashed by Syed Yasin and Mohammad Shariq, through PoS agents,for a commission and at some instances the encashed cryptocurrencies were routed through the fraudulently opened mule accounts in FINO Payments Bank.
The ED filed charge-sheet in this case and revealed that the autorickshaw blast case at Mangaluru was a part of the plan of the ISIS,a terrorist organisation,to spread terror and wage war against the Government of India and to threaten the integrity and sovereignty of India.
