‘They showed no signs of any suspicious activities'

The Central Crime Branch (CCB) sleuths picked up the five terror suspects from a quaint little house on the second floor of a multi-storey building in Kanakanagar, adjoining R T Nagar, for allegedly planning to trigger explosions across the city.

Syed Suhel Khan (24), one of the five terror suspects, was a close aide of the mastermind Junaid Ahmed who is a prime suspect in the 2008 bomb blast and the 2017 sensational Noor Ahmed murder case.

When DH visited Syed Suhel Khan’s house at Kanakanagar, neighbours and relatives said they showed no signs of any suspicious activities.

Syed Suhel Khan lived like a family man, said his neighbours. He had shifted to the house in May, according to the house owner.

Pushpalatha, a resident of one of the other houses in the building, said that he lived with his wife, child and an elderly woman, probably his mother.

“We used to have small talks with the ladies in the house and it seemed like any other poor family struggling to make ends meet. The elderly woman would cook at others’ houses and his wife was a housemaid. In fact, they had told me that they were struggling to even buy groceries,” she said.

‘Didn’t have money to buy groceries’

Padmavathi, the owner of the house, acknowledged that the family was not financially stable.

“They only paid Rs 5,000 as advance. They requested that I give them some time to pay the remaining advance of Rs 45,000 since the child was sick and treatment costs were high. However, when they were not able to pay the first month’s rent of Rs 6,000, I asked them to vacate,” she said.

Many other neighbours told this reporter that they had hardly seen Suhel in the area.

“I saw him only when they were shifting into the house. That apart, I had not seen any of them,” said Kausar, a resident in the opposite building.

‘Family was missing for a week’

Pushpalatha, a neighbour and house owner Padmavathi said that there was no suspicious activity. “I was told that Suhel was a painter and would go out only when he got work. He used to stay at home many times and not many people visited them. There was no room for suspicion.”

Pushpalatha said that the members of the family were hardly seen this week.

“I assumed that they were out of town. I realised that there was something wrong only when the police landed at their doorstep,” she said.

Padmavathi added that the police were making rounds to the house over the last three days.