He was the person who had given Rs10 lakh to suspected IM member Yasin Bhatkal, alleged to have masterminded the blasts.
The Maharashtra anti-terrorism squad (ATS) is on a roll: it has made the fourth arrest in the 13/7 blasts case.
Kanwarnain Vazirchand Pathreja of Ghaziabad was picked up by a special cell of the police there on Monday evening on the charge of being the main hawala operator who gave top Indian Mujahideen (IM) operative Yasin Bhatkal the money to carry out the blasts.
Forty-two-year-old Pathreja, who runs a jewellery store — Jyoti Jewellers — in Delhi’s Chandni Chowk, was brought to Mumbai on Tuesday and was remanded by a local court in police custody till February 10.
“Pathreja is the main person who runs the hawala network from Delhi. Investigations have revealed that in early 2011, Pathreja had sent the money at a go to Yasin (Bhatkal). We will interrogate him to find out who had instructed him to provide the money to Yasin (Bhatkal),” said a senior ATS officer on the condition of anonymity.
Pathreja has claimed that he has never been to Mumbai in the past and has no criminal background. “We will interrogate him to get more details about his network and role in the blasts,” said the officer.
He added that the plot to carry out the blasts was hatched outside India. DNA had on January 28 said the conspiracy was hatched at a meeting at a hotel in Dubai, which was attended by Pakistani national and IM co-founder Riyaz Bhatkal, and one of the arrested suspects in the case, Haroon Rashid Naik, and that money was routed to Yasin Bhatkal through Naik. The ATS will take Naik, who has been arrested in a fake currency case, into custody in a couple of days, and will grill him as well Pathreja on the blasts’ funding.
The ATS is also mulling over invoking the Prevention of Money Laundering Act in the case. “Four to five persons (including Pathreja) were involved in the money trail. A special team was formed within the ATS to look after this trail in the case and it took five months to identify the whole chain of hawala network and the funding of the blasts,” the officer said.
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