In the morning, Mohammad Shariq hailed an autorickshaw from Mangalore Railway Junction. He was secretly carrying a pressure cooker full of explosives. He instructed the auto driver to go to Pumpwell Circle.
Shariq was fully prepared to implement his objective. But even the best plans can be the worst ones. Little did he know that within minutes of the auto ride, his precious cargo, an IED pressure cooker bomb, would explode, leaving him and the auto driver severely burned and hospitalized.
The “mysterious explosion in a moving autorickshaw” immediately made nationwide headlines and put Sharik under intense scrutiny. As the police treat the incident as an act of terrorism and launch a high-level investigation, the whole dastardly plot begins to unravel.
On Monday, a picture of Sharik in the “ISIS-pose” placed over a pressure cooker with circuit wires was released. While posing for that viral photo, he couldn’t have guessed that Cooker would blow the bomb in her face.
As the investigation progressed, the police learned that Sharik had terrorist links and had earlier been booked under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) for putting graffiti on walls in Mangaluru. He was on bail in this case and absconded in another terror case.
It was also learned that the cooker recovered from the crime scene was fitted with a detonator, wire and battery which were used to cause the explosion. Police suspect that Sharik was linked to those who carried out the car blasts in Coimbatore in October.
In an eerie coincidence, the Coimbatore case erupted when a gas cylinder exploded inside the vehicle in which the accused was travelling. However, while Shariq survived the auto blast, the Coimbatore case accused Muveen was not so lucky.
