Rameshwaram Cafe blast case: Despite fake Aadhaar, 35 SIM cards, here is what led to breakthrough

The duo kept changing their names frequently as they hopped between low-budget, under-the-radar hotels, some of them located in Kolkata, Purulia and Darjeeling. To avoid leaving any trail, they used to make all payments in cash.

The NIA on Saturday got a 10-day custody of the two key suspects in the Rameshwaram Cafe blast case who had been hiding in West Bengal with the help of fake Aadhaar cards using different addresses and other tactics.

The accused, Adbul Matheen Ahmed Taahaa and Mussavir Hussain Shazib, were arrested from a hotel in Purba Medinipur district's seaside tourist town Digha, around 190 km from Kolkata, the NIA said.

This was in connection with the IED blast they had executed in Bengaluru's Rameshwaram Cafe on March 1.

As per a report in The Indian Express, Mussavir Hussain Shazib (30), who allegedly planted the IED at the cafe and Adbul Matheen Taahaa (30), who is suspected to be mastermind behind the attack had been using fake identities and various addresses to throw the investigators off.

As per the report, the two kept changing their names frequently as they hopped between low-budget, under-the-radar hotels, some of them located in Kolkata, Purulia and Darjeeling. To avoid leaving any trail, they used to make all payments in cash.

According to another report by IE, Taaha used cryptocurrency to finance his operations. "He used various conduits, including stolen identities and IDs of people recruited for the ISIS cause in different parts of India, to transfer cryptocurrency to Shareef to arrange logistics for the blast,” the publication quoted an official as saying.

Along with this, they also kept several Aadhaar cards and driving licences handy with addresses ranging from Maharashtra to Karnataka to Tamil Nadu. During their stay in Kolkata, Shazib reportedly went with the identity of Yusha Shahnawaz Patel from Maharashtra’s Palghar, while Taahaa went with the name Vignesh B D from Karnataka in one hotel and Anmol Kulkarni in another.

Despite changing their SIM cards as many as 35 times, it was this element that led to the breakthrough.

As per a report in The Times of India, one of the suspects left his phone at Micromagic Infotech in Chandni to get it fixed.

Here, the shopkeeper inserted "one of our own SIM cards...to find out of there was any problem with the microphone," TOI quoted the accused as saying.

This alerted the investigators who later contacted the shopkeeper who got told them everything he remembered, hence helping them trace the accused.