Bengaluru cafe blast: CCTV trail gives leads on suspect’s identity, stopovers

The suspect’s arrival in a public bus at a bus stop located about 100 metres from the cafe at around 10.45 am, his entry into the cafe at 11.34 am, exit at 11.43 am, and subsequent walk to a bus stop over a kilometre away for his escape using public buses has been captured on CCTV cameras.

Sources said the CCTV trail of the suspect — from his arrival to his escape, an hour before the 12.56 pm blast at the cafe — has provided some key leads including his facial features.

Sources indicated that the suspect travelled in multiple public buses — both to plant the IED he was carrying and to flee the scene — and made multiple stopovers, including at a Muslim religious centre a few kilometres from the site of the incident during the getaway process.

A baseball cap that the suspect was wearing during his presence at the cafe has been found at one of the locations where a stopover was made during the getaway, sources said. The suspect changed his attire during a stopover where the cap was discarded, sources said.

The IED that was used in the blast was planted in a corner of the cafe – near a hand-wash area. The impact of the device, which contained nuts and bolts as projectiles, was diminished by the presence of a wall and a tree in the vicinity of where the IED was kept, police sources said.

A CCTV grab of the suspect posted by NIA

The nuts and bolts in the device flew upward to the ceiling rather than sideways through the packed restaurant.

The probe revealed that the IED was kept in a tiffin box bag, and was wrapped in fibrous material, sources said. The IED contained a mixture of easily available explosives – sulphur and potassium nitrate – which was detonated by bulb filaments switched on by a digital timer linked to a printed circuit.

The triggering system in the IED bears a close similarity to devices found in two Islamic State-linked terror incidents from 2022 in Karnataka now under investigation by the NIA, sources said.

Investigators are of the view that the suspect may have faked usage of a mobile phone during his nine-minute halt at the cafe.

While police investigations are looking at the cell tower dump data for the time period when the suspect was in the restaurant and its vicinity to identify the phones that were in use, there are doubts on whether the suspect was actually using a cell phone or merely pretending in order to camouflage his presence.

“When a phone is in use there is a light that comes on but in this case the screen of the phone remains blank,” sources said.