Past grounds Kovai bomb blast convict at airport

CHENNAI: A former convict in the Coimbatore bomb blast case was arrested at the Chennai airport on Thursday, reportedly for not disclosing the details of his conviction in the passport application. Police said that immigration officials caught the man when they discovered that a Look Out Circular (LOC) was pending against him. Khalil Rahman (37), son of Abdul Hameed of Coimbatore, was caught during the immigration check just as he was about to board a flight to China early on Thursday, to place orders for mobile phones for his shop at Gandhipuram in Coimbatore. He was remanded to judicial custody later.Sources said that when the officials inquired further, they found that the man was convicted in the Coimbatore bomb blasts case and did not reveal his conviction details while applying for his passport after he was released from prison in 2006.“After he was convicted, imprisoned and released, the LOC should have been released, but it was kept pending. It was this that made the officials check his details. He should have mentioned his conviction details in the application while applying for a passport, but he did not,” said a police official.Explaining the 37-year-old’s association with the Islamic outfit that was linked to the Kovai bomb blasts, police said that Khalil Rahman had first sought the outfit’s help to recover `30 lakh that his father had given to an influential person in Coimbatore. Soon after the blast, police interrogated all those who had links with the outfit and that was when Khalil’s association came to light, sources said.“He told us that he had given money to help bring the blast accused out on bail and the members of the outfit were collecting money for that,” said a police official, adding that Khalil was arrested in 1999, when the Kovai police filed an FIR after the outfit allegedly attempted another series of bomb blasts. He was convicted in the case and was released from prison in 2006. Soon after, he had flown to Dubai in 2007 from Chennai with a tourist visa, but returned in two months as he could not get any job there, police said. The same year, he had flown to Saudi Arabia from Trivandrum and worked there as a computer hardware sales manager.  He had returned in 2010 and started a mobile store in Coimbatore with his brother-in-law.