AFTER THE SIX TONNES OF BALL BEARINGS POLICE CATCH SOME MORE STEEL BALLS, SPY CAMERAS FOR TAMIL TIGERS

By Walter Jayawardhana

A week after catching six tons of steel balls to make claymore mines India’s Mumbai police caught Indian Rupees 150,000 worth of spy cameras about to be smuggled out to the same terrorist group, Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

The procurement of arms and other military equipment by the LTTE after the detection of six tons of ball bearings as raw materials for claymore mines by Indian law enforcement officials continued to make headlines in India when the Police also discovered another 5000 ball bearings and digital cameras used for spy work worth Indian Rupees 150 thousand rupees was once again caught in Mumbai area, according to police reports.

The Mumbai police sources revealed that four people including three hailing from Tamil Nadu were arrested from North Western Mumbai area suspected to be people dealing with the Tamil terrorist group LTTE. Police said the equipment included 65 Japanese made digital cameras believed to be used widely by the Tamil Tigers for spy work.

"The four were arrested from Vile Parle on Monday. They were in the process of sending a consignment of 65 digital cameras, 500 ball bearings, 21 camera lenses, 30 motherboard chips, 300 FM radio sets and other accessories collectively valued at Rs 15 lakh to Tamil Nadu," Additional Commissioner of Police (west region) Bipin Bihari told news reporters

The four were arrested while they were getting ready to ship them to Chennai from Vile Parle station, the police said. The goods were in a Maruti van from where the police took them.
Police Inspector Sudhakar Pujari said that Nainar, Sultan and Khan arrived in Mumbai on January 25 and were staying in Dongri. “There is reason to believe that the goods were meant for some illegal purpose, as the four travelled from Dongri to meet Khan — who owns a courier agency at Vile Parle. We believe they had sent goods to Chennai in the past too.” Coins from other countries, including Sri Lanka were also recovered.

“We learnt that one them came back from Hong Kong with these goods on January 28. They had planned to smuggle these goods to Chennai,” said Additional Commissioner of Police Bipin Bihari (western zone).

Strangely none of the people arrested for having dealings with the LTTE were Tamil people and all were Muslims.

The police said none of the suspects arrested could produce any receipts to indicate the suspected military related merchandise were purchased legitimately.

The police identified the suspects as Mohammed Kashim Nainar, Hamid Wahab Sultan and Mohammed Sayyed Ahmed (all from Tamil Nadu) and Rafiq Ahmed Atiullah Sheikh, a local who works for a courier company.

Police said it was too early to associate the seizure with the arrest of an alleged agent of the banned Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) at Oshivara on January27.

The very first to be arrested were eight alleged men suspected to be LTTE agents last week. That led to the arrest of Miraj Saheb Ismail, a tea vendor hailing from Tamil Nadu but living in Mumbai. He is the one who purchased the six tones of ball bearings from Mumbai. Thereafter the police detectives from Q branch of the Tamil Nadu Police arrested the seller of the steel balls Asghar Ali, who did business in South Central Mumbai’s Null bazaar.