Mangaluru blast: Unknown Islamic Resistance Council takes responsibility, police to verify letter
On November 19, a man who was carrying a crude bomb that exploded in an autorickshaw in Karnataka's Mangaluru and had targeted the famous Manjunath Temple, says a letter "claiming responsibility" of the incident, reports said.
FollowAn unknown group, the Islamic Resistance Council, on Thursday (November 24) took responsibility for the Mangaluru cooker blast in a letter. However, the police are still verifying the letter.
On November 19, a man who was carrying a crude bomb that exploded in an autorickshaw in Karnataka's Mangaluru and had targeted the famous Manjunath Temple, says a letter "claiming responsibility" of the incident, reports said.
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The letter, which is being verified, was sent by a group that calls itself 'Islamic Resistance Council', which the police said they hadn't heard of so far.
The police, treating the blast as "an act of terror", have arrested the accused, Shareeq, 29, who was injured in the blast and remains in hospital. The blast took place in the communally charged coastal town of Mangaluru, 370 km from state capital Bengaluru, months ahead of the state assembly elections that is likely to take place in 2023.
The police also said that the letter carrying a threat to senior police officer Alok Kumar, was received by the Intelligence Department.
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According to reports, the source said, "It is not clear where the letter came from. The name of this organisation came to the fore for the first time. We are investigating if the letter is even authentic."
Typed in English and printed with Shareeq's photo, the letter says he "attempted to attack the Hindutva Temple in Kadri, a bastion of the Saffron terrorists in Mangalore".
"We are only retaliating because an open war has been declared upon us, because mob lynching has become a norm, because oppressive laws and legislations are passed to suppress us and interfere in our religion, because our innocents are languishing in prisons, because public spaces today reverberate with calls of our genocide, and because as Muslims we have been commanded to wage jihad when faced with mischief and oppression," the letter reportedly read.
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Meanwhile, the police have said Shareeq was carrying a low-intensity Improvised Explosive device or IED. A burnt pressure cooker fitted with batteries was found inside the vehicle. The driver suffered burns too.
The police also found a stolen Aadhaar card that Shareeq was allegedly carrying. He is from Karnataka and has travelled outside the state over the last few months. "He had recently travelled to Coimbatore and parts of Tamil Nadu," the state police chief has said.
