A Gujarat police team, carrying a court warrant, visited  Madhya Pradesh last Thursday to take the State SIMI chief  Safdar Nagori and four others to Gujarat for interrogation in connection with the July 26 Ahmedabad blasts.

Gujarat police is also seeking custody of Hafiz Hussain alias Adnan, the chief of  Karnataka SIMI unit, who had escaped from Karnataka to Madhya Pradesh last year. Adnan along with Nagori and three other SIMI leaders were arrested in Madhya Pradesh on March 27 last year and is currently in the custody of the MP police.

Senior police officials in Madhya Pradesh told Deccan Herald that the anti-terrorist squad of Karnataka police had also  taken custody of Adnan and questioned him soon after the July 25 blasts in Bangalore.

Adnan and Nagori were also taken to Mumbai by the anti-terrorist squad to probe their role into the July 11, 2006, train bombings.

In a similar way, the Rajasthan police has taken custody of Sajid Mansoori from  Gujarat for interrogation in the Jaipur blasts in May.

Mansoori, a resident of Surat  and the alleged kingpin of the  the Jaipur serial blasts has been grilled by the Rajasthan cops to unearth “an elaborate conspiracy” which included SIMI  groups  in Gujarat, Rajasthan and UP. Rajasthan police has also taken custody of Shahbaz Hussain, a cyber café-cum-computer institute operator in Lucknow with the cooperation with the UP police.

According to the government, the expose of the conspiracy and arrests of the top rung SIMI leaders in Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh last year had forced the organisation to shift their attention towards Gujarat and Rajasthan.