Salepur: The Salepur Judicial Magistrate First Class (JMFC) court on Thursday allowed the Special Task Force (STF) of Crime Branch to take suspected Al Qaeda operative Abdur Rehman on a fresh seven-day remand for further interrogation.
The STF produced Rehman in the court a day before the completion of the first phase of remand and prayed to the court for permission to take him on a fresh 10-day remand. However, the court allowed the investigating agency to take him only on a seven-day remand.
During the first phase of remand period, Abdur Rehman has admitted that he is linked to various terror outfits, including al-Qaeda, and gave shelter to an accused in the Kandahar plane hijack case of 1999 in Cuttack.
Notably, in December 2015, a joint team of Odisha Police and Delhi Police Special Cell had arrested the 37-year-old cleric from Paschimkachcha village in Cuttack district for his alleged links with terrorist organisation Al Qaeda in Indian Subcontinent (AQIS).
Rehman was running an illegal madarsa at Tangi, 25 km from Cuttack, for the past two years and had appointed five teachers. The madarsa has since been closed and the students, most of them from neighbouring Jharkhand, sent back to their homes.