Centre calls Kodiyeri’s ‘bluff’

NEW DELHI: A day after Kerala asserted that it had shared vital information with the Centre on Thadiyantavide Nazeer’s escape from India to Bangladesh, the Centre has refuted the state’s claim.

Union Home Secretary G K Pillai told Express on Wednesday that there was no input from Kerala about Nazeer, now in the custody of the Karnataka police, or his companion being holed up in Bangladesh.

The Centre had its information “from other sources”.

The state Home Minister Kodiyeri Balakrishnan had said the other day that the Kerala Police had provided vital information to the Centre in April 2009 regarding Nazeer’s presence in Bangladesh.

Pillai challenged the state’s charge that the Centre was not sharing information with the State on time. “We do share all relevant information with the state at the ap ropriate time,” he said. Earlier, while reacting to the arrest of Nazeer and his accomplice at the Indo-Bangladesh border, Kodiyeri had said the state government got the information late and the Centre ought to ‘improve’ its intelligence sharing with states. According to Union Home Ministry sources, Kerala had sent a detailed letter to the ministry, listing the cases in which the state police wanted the two in their custody for interrogation, after reports surfaced in the media that the alleged Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists were nabbed in Bangladesh.

“After the arrest of the two in Bangladesh was reported, we received a letter from the state police seeking their custody on their being handed over to India,” an Union ministry official had told Express.

The three-page letter also included details of the case registered at the Edakkad police station pertaining to the recruitment of Malayali youths by the terror network, which the Special Investigation Team of the state is probing.

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