Located about 700km from Pune and about 150 km north of Mangalore on the national highway no. 17, the Bhatkal town in the Uttara Kannada district of Karnataka has come under the intense gaze of major investigating agencies across the country.
Famous for its Navayat Muslim community with origins in Yemen, a large number of Bhakal’s residents are prosperous with close relatives in Dubai, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries from where they send money back home.
The wealthy people here have constructed many bungalows and mansions on the Bhatkal coastline.
At least 10 terror suspects, including the two key suspects in Pune’s German Bakery bomb blast — Riyaz Bhatkal and his brother Iqbal — belong to this town and have been missing for the past few years.
The premier National Investigative Agency (NIA) and teams from at least three other agencies have been conducting intense search operations in and around Bhatkal to obtain a breakthrough in the Pune blast and other cases.
The police suspect that the Indian Mujahideen (IM), allegedly founded by Riyaz Bhatkal alias Shabandri and his elder brother Iqbal, were behind the Pune blast.
Besides the Bhatkal brothers, the police have been on the lookout for at least eight other terror suspects originally from this town, all of who are missing.
They include Ahmed Sidi Bapa, Mohammad Hussain Farhan, Afif Jailani, Mohammad Gurfan, Abdul Khadir Sultan, Jasim Iqbal Syeedi, Abdul Majid and Dr Arif Motesham.
According to the people here, the first major communal flashpoint in Bhatkal was in 1991 after a fiery speech by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Uma Bharati in front of a mosque which led to rioting.
In 1996, BJP MLA Dr Chittarajan was shot dead by unidentified suspects here, which again sparked rioting.
Since then, this town has become communally polarised with Muslim fundamentalists and right-wing Hindu groups such as the Shriram Sena, Bajrang Dal and Hindu Rakshna Vedike wanting to assert themselves.
Constant clashes between the two groups are believed to have created a fertile ground for attracting youth towards terrorism, say the police.
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