Arrested SIMI ‘Professor’ was jailed and bailed

ERNAKULAM/CHENNAI: An engineering college assistant professor Zakir Basha alias Zakir Asim, 31, who was arrested in Kerala on Wednesday for his alleged links with the banned SIMI was already listed in the police records in Chennai.

According to police officers here, Basha was arrested in Chennai in 2001 immediately after the SIMI was banned.

At that time, he was the Chennai regional secretary of SIMI. Basha was a member of the SIMI even when he was studying in the Crescent Engineering College (now BS Abdur Rahman Crescent Engineering College), a well known technical education institution in Tamil Nadu.

“The North Beach police had picked him up and he was lodged in the Vellore prison for a few months. He is a native of Pallapatti in Karur district. After released on bail, he had moved to Kerala and worked as an assistant professor in electronics department in KEMA College of Engineering in Pukkattupadi, near Aluva,” police said.

On questioning the 18 persons who gathered for a secret meeting at Panayikulam, near Aluva, they revealed about the involvement of Basha and police team picked him up from the lodge at Muttam in Ernakulam, on August 16,” a senior police officer told ‘this website’s newspaper’.