Police commissioner Ajai Kumar Singh at the news conference in Bangalore. Picture by Shashi Kiran K

Jan. 3: Investigators probing last week’s terror attack at Bangalore’s Indian Institute of Science today claimed a breakthrough with the arrest of a suspected member of a Pakistan-based militant group from neighbouring Andhra Pradesh.

Bangalore police chief Ajai Kumar Singh said a city police team picked up Abdul Rehman, a 35-year-old self-styled commander of the Lashkar-e-Toiba in south India, late on Sunday from Nalgonda, a town that appears to be the training ground for new terror recruits.

Two years ago, the police had shot dead Azam Ghori, an agent of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, who operated from Nalgonda, about 100 km from Hyderabad, and ran several terrorist modules in north India.

“We have information that he (Rehman) is the leader of the Lashkar-e-Toiba’s operations in south India,” Singh said.

Rehman was produced before a magistrate in the Karnataka capital and remanded in police custody for 14 days. But he was not paraded before the media and the police also refused to release a photograph of the suspect.

It is not yet clear whether Rehman was involved in the strike that killed a professor and wounded four others. “It is too early to say whether he was the mastermind or just an abettor,” the commissioner told a news conference.

Singh said he was “confident” that “interrogation will reveal details of the attack”, though Rehman was proving to be a tough nut.

“He is a trained militant. They are trained not to give away anything. He seems to have stock answers for everything and revealed very little,” he added.

The officer said Rehman, who operated under various names like Dr Rehman and Abdul Hameed, paid several visits to Saudi Arabia. “It is being ascertained whether he was in the city on Wednesday (the day of the attack) and who actually staged the attack,” he said.

The police suspect that Rehman could have driven the getaway vehicle. Sources said Bangalore police zeroed in on him following a tip-off from central agencies.

Singh refused to say whether Rehman was an Indian national. “His passport has been seized. It is being verified. We cannot reveal any details now.”

The commissioner said no arms or ammunition was seized from the suspect. Only some documentary evidence was found. “We cannot reveal anything now,” he repeated, but added that investigations were on the “right track”.