Agartala, July 18: The missing comrade of the 11 Maharashtrian preachers detained in Tripura has been traced in Thane, police said here today as they listed several “suspicious” facts about the group.

Faisal Ansari is now being questioned by Thane police on possible links with the banned Students’ Islamic Movement of India and fundamentalist outfits.

The 11 Tablighis ? preachers who spread awareness of scriptures and religious rituals ? were detained from a mosque in the border district of Dhalai on July 13, two days after the Mumbai train blasts.

On July 16, interrogators were told that a 12th member, Faisal, had left for home on July 9 for treatment of an injury sustained in a motorbike accident. “Maharashtra police suspect he is related to Zabiuddin Ansari, a prime accused in the Mumbai blasts,” a police source had then said. “He may have sneaked across to Bangladesh.”

But Thane police found Faisal in his village, Membra, and detained him. His 11 comrades in Tripura are now being questioned by a team of two Maharashtra police officers, Sachin Rane and R. Tonti.

“Our officers were finding it difficult to make headway because they don’t know Marathi,” an officer here said.

Sources said though the police have found no concrete evidence against the 11, they are suspicious because of the group’s motley character: some members are highly educated while some semi-literate. Besides, the mosque authorities in Malaya, Kamalpur subdivision ? where the 11 were picked up ? had been unaware that a Tablighi group from Maharashtra would arrive.

“Besides, when Muslims go out for Tablighi work, they are supposed to follow a dress code. But Faisal wore jeans and T-shirt,” a source said.

The police find it “highly suspicious” that one of them, computer engineer Mohammed Wais Sheikh, who had worked in the US, had booked an air ticket to Abu Dhabi online from Kamalpur.