Belagavi, Dec 8: The Court of Judicial Magistrate First Class-III in Belagavi, on Monday, remanded Ejaz Ahmed Bihari, who was picked up in Kalaburagi for suspected terror links, in police custody for seven days.
Qureshi has also been remanded in judicial custody for 14 days and sent to the Hindalga Central Prison, police sources said.
According to cops it was editor Ejaz, who had hired the services of Qureshi to videograph airports, central bus-stations, railway stations and other vital installations in different parts of Karnataka.
Accordingly, Qureshi, who worked as a vendor for a Urdu newspaper run by Ejaz, videographed 36 points in Bagalkot, Belagavi, Bengaluru, Hubballi-Dharwad, Gadag, Kalaburagi, Mysuru, and Vijayapura, including the Vidhana Soudha in Bengaluru, palace in Mysuru, and Suvarna Vidhana Soudha and Visvesvaraya Technological University in Belagavi.
However, there were no clippings of the palace and Suvarna Vidhana Soudha on his cellphone, Police Commissioner S. Ravi said recently.
Three others released
Ejaz Ahmed Bihari, the editor of Salamati, a Kalaburgi based Urdu daily, and three other journalists of the same newspaper, were picked up for questioning last week after the vendor of the newspaper was caught by police.
Sources close to officials, who interrogated the journalists in undisclosed places said that that the investigating officers, however, let go the other three — Javed, photojournalist, Akbar, copywriter, and Hyder Bhagban who is said to a partner in the newspaper.
All the three, who were picked up four days ago and intensively questioned by police teams from Belagavi, Bengaluru and Kalaburagi for three days, were released in the early hours of Sunday and dropped at the Brahmpur Police Station here. The relatives of these persons were asked to come to the police station and sign a few papers before the three were released on the condition that they should be present in the police station whenever summoned.
The investigating officials also checked the call records of the mobile phones seized from the three and the antecedents of the suspects before they were released.
The sources said that the needle of suspicion is now centered on Ejaz Bihari, even though the officers could not find any solid evidence against him.
Ejaz Bihari originally come to Kalaburagi to pursue his engineering course and later settled down there after his marriage to a local girl. His “affluent” lifestyle has come as a surprise to the police officials as the income from the newspaper of which he was editor was very limited. He was also paying good salaries to his employees. The financial dealings of Ejaz Bihari have now come under close scrutiny of the investigating agencies.
Relatives and friends of the three persons who were released by the police said that no third-degree methods were used during interrogation. They were asked how they were being paid such high salaries by Ejaz Bihari; the photojournalist, Javed, was being paid a monthly salary of Rs 10,000 which according to police is a very high for an employee of a local newspaper.
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