A suspect in Mumbai. (Reuters)

Mumbai/Bangalore, July 28: The suspected leader of a Lashkar-e-Toiba sleeper cell in Mumbai and his software engineer brother were arrested late last night, with police claiming a link between the train blasts and the Aurangabad arms and RDX haul in May.

Faisal At-Ur Rehman Sheikh, 30, and Bangalore-based techie Muzammil At-Ur Rehman Sheikh, 22, were formally arrested by Mumbai police after sustained questioning following their detention over a week ago.

Alleged Lashkar western region commander Faisal, a resident of Mumbai’s western Naya Nagar suburb, is believed to have headed its Mumbai module.

Its other members included the previously arrested unani practitioner, Tanvir Ahmed Ansari, key-maker Zameer Ahmed Sheikh and Pune-based Shaikh Sohail Mehmood, sources said.

Faisal handled the terror funds that arrived through hawala channels, using them to send team-members to Lashkar training camps Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, the police said. A senior crime branch officer linked him to the Aurangabad arms haul.

Muzammil, also a member of the sleeper cell, had taken up a job as technical assistant with software firm Oracle in Bangalore about a month ago.

Bangalore police had picked him up on July 13, but let him off as he wasn’t in Mumbai on the day of the train blasts. They later tipped off Mumbai police about him after his brother Faisal’s detention.

Bangalore police had earlier goofed up while doing a background check on Muzammil, a college dropout who submitted a fake BSc certificate to get his Oracle job. The police gave Muzammil the thumbs-up.

Maharashtra anti-terrorist squad chief K.P. Raghuvanshi denied reports that Faisal had admitted to a plan to attack the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre and a film awards function. He was tight-lipped on whether Faisal’s sleeper cell was the one that had carried out the July 11 bombings, indicating that the specific roles played by the eight persons arrested so far were unclear.

A crime branch officer said: “The links with the Aurangabad arms haul and the Delhi blasts are clearly emerging. Faisal is a Lashkar commander for western India and has close links with Fayaz Kagzi (one of the three suspects wanted in the Aurangabad seizure).”

He added that Kagzi had, on Faisal’s orders, carried out the February 19 blast in the Karnavati Express in Ahmedabad that injured 25 people.

Faisal has diplomas in polytechnic and desktop publishing. The brothers have been remanded in police custody till August 9.

Attack threat

One of the atomic energy installations in India could be targeted by the Lashkar-e-Toiba, national security adviser M.K. Narayanan has said.

“There is information that maybe one of our atomic energy installations could be the target,” he told a TV channel. “It’s a LeT operation.... It is a very serious threat.”