Rourkela, Aug 13: Yesterday, the Crime Branch of Odisha police filed the charge sheet against five Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) activists who had been arrested in February at the Rourkela SDJM court.
It’s stated that the four SIMI members along with a woman of the Muslim community named Najma, the mother of Sheikh Mahmood, one of the SIMI ultras were taken into police custody from a rented house in Rourkela on the 16th of February night this year. Apart from Rourkela, these five SIMI activists had also taken shelter in a rented house at Bhadrak. The Crime Branch police had also interrogated the house owners. Following their arrest, the Special Task Force (STF) of the State Crime Branch and NIA had taken them into remand and had interrogated them. They had escaped from Khandwa Jail in Madhya Pradesh in 2013.
Notably, all these activists were residents of Khandwa in Madhya Pradesh and were among the most-wanted terrorists in the country. The National Investigating Agency (NIA) had announced Rs 10 lakh as reward on each of their heads. They were involved in 17 blasts at various places, records showed that they also had their hand in the murder of two policemen in Telangana and one in Madhya Pradesh. Apart from this, they had also robbed off a bank worth Rs 48lakh in Telangana.
