Patna superintendent of police Shivdeep Lande at the Patna City sub-divisional jail on Tuesday. Picture by Sachin

Patna, June 19: The promptness and secrecy of Mumbai police in the July 13 serial blasts probe has taken the Patna cops by surprise.

A team of Mumbai police came down to Khajekala police station in Patna City to “verify” about one Faiz Imam, reliable police sources told The Telegraph today.

The team landed in Patna three days ago but chose not to contact any senior police officers even while they visited at least two private hospitals in Patna City trying to gather information about Imam.

The team has left for Mumbai now but the police here are flummoxed over the conduct of the team from Maharashtra and have started their own investigation into the Patna connection of Faiz Imam, a Mumbai blast suspect.

Patna superintendent of police (SP) Shivdeep Lande confirmed that the Mumbai team was in the state capital for three days.

“The team told the Khajekala police station that they had come from Bandra in Mumbai. But the application submitted by them to the local police station showed that they were a police team from Juhu in Mumbai. The men sought help from the local police to get information on one Faiz Imam and visited M.T Hasnen Nursing Home in Alamganj and the Guru Gobind Singh Hospital, located in the Khajekala area, for the same purpose,” the senior officer said.

Police sources said any police team coming from a different city or state had to contact the superintendent of police (SP) or the senior superintendent of police (SSP) of the particular district with the details of their purpose of visit.

“The team did not contact any senior police officer after reaching the state capital. They claimed Imam was presently lodged in a jail in Mumbai and had told them during interrogation that he was in Patna from April 22 to May 3, receiving treatment at a hospital. The team claimed that they were here to verify the same. At present, the police here don’t have any information about the whereabouts of Imam,” Lande added.

The Patna police today went to the nursing home and the hospital and had a talk with the doctors there in regard to the visit of the police team.

“The doctors there confirmed that Imam was indeed undergoing treatment for a fracture in his left leg as well as a stomach problem. But then the police need to be sure about the facts here. We are trying to locate the whereabouts of this man. We are also trying to find out whether Imam is actually lodged in a prison in Mumbai. We need to be alert and absolutely sure about facts given the present volatile state of affairs,” city SP Shivdeep Lande said.

Meanwhile, the city police are also scanning the backgrounds of four people belonging to different cities in India, who were caught by the Government Railway Police in fake currency cases and lodged at the Patna City sub-divisional jail.

All the four men were released on bail last month. The reason for the investigation is a number of international phone calls made from the area around the jail.

Lande, who with a team of cops today raided the jail premises, said that there were many anomalies, including incomplete visitor’s book, which have alarmed the cops.

“There are a total of four mobile towers near the jail premises. Some international calls were made from the area. The police want to know whether these calls were made from inside the jail,” the SP said.

These four men have been identified as Prem Thakur and Ravindra Rana from Chandi-garh, Rajkumar from New Jalpaiguri in Bengal and Ramesh Thakur from Bilaspur in Uttar Pradesh.