Patna blasts: How Bhatkal's arrest helped mastermind Tehseen get away

[caption id=“attachment_119955” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  The site of the blasts in Gandhi Maidan, Patna. PTI[/caption] Mohammed Tehseen Akhtar, the Indian Mujahideen operative believed to be the mastermind of the Patna serial blasts, could well have been in police police custody had it not been for an early warning about IM founder Yasin Bhatkal’s arrest in August this year. Having slipped away just a few hours before investigators attempted to nab him from his apartment in Mangalore, he has then been spotted in Pushkar (Rajasthan), Ranchi and other places, according to a report in The Hindustan Times. According to the report, Akhtar and Waqas, Bhatkal’s Pakistani associate, had been living in a Mangalore apartment since the twin blasts at Dilsukhnagar, Hyderabad. They heard of Bhatkal’s arrest from raxaul, Bihar, from a location along the Indo-Nepal border, on the television. The report says: If Bhatkal’s arrest was not leaked to the media, Akhtar and Waqas would have been in custody,” the official said. Tehseen has a reward of Rs 10 lakh on his head, offered by the NIA for any information on his whereabouts. He has played tourist guide in some locations that he was conducting a recce of in the past, according to the Hindustan Times report. He also sometimes introduced himself as a student looking for a place to stay, according to a report in The Economic Times. Now considered the operational head of the IM after Bhatkal’s arrest, he may be the youngest terror kingpin at age 23 years.  The report says: His meteoric rise came within three years of joining IM and partnering Yasin in planting bombs in Varanasi in 2010. He was also with Yasin while planting bombs in Mumbai in 2011. Intelligence agencies believe that IM’s chief hiding in Pakistan, Riyaz Bhatkal, developed confidence in Akhtar to let him carry out serial bombings in Hyderabad on his own, earlier this year. After the two serial blasts in Bihar, Akhtar is now on top of India’s wanted list. Investigating officials have described Tehseen as a tech-savvy youngster who uses the Internet on his Android handheld device but has not left any trace of his whereabouts. The NIA has also raided his village Maniarpur in Samastipur, Bihar and have taken DNA samples from is father Mohammad Waseem Akhtar, which actually helped police establish that Tehseen had been in the Mangalore flat where the NIA found detonators, wires and explosives.