The Kerala Police allegedly helped T. Nazeer, self-styled south India chief of the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba, flee in 2006 after he was picked up on murder charges.

K. Fousia, Nazeer’s mother-in-law, told Hindustan Times from her ancestral house in Kadachira in northern Kannur district, about 550 km north of state capital Thiruvananthapuram, said a big posse of policemen picked up Nazeer on a December night in 2006.

Nazeer was arrested for murdering a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh activist, Vinod, who went by his first name only.

At present, a joint team of Kerala and Karnataka police is interrogating the duo in Bangalore after Nazeer and his brother-in-law Sharfaz Shamsuddin were handed over to Meghalaya Police by the Bangladesh authorities last week.

T. P. Premarajan, the police officer who investigated the 2006 case, reiterated that Nazeer vanished in the dark when the police cordoned off the house.

But Fousia said, “They talked to him for 15 minutes and took him away (in 2006). Later, two policemen came again to inform us that he fled on the way to the police station. We couldn’t believe it then. For us it was a big joke.”

“How can he dodge such a big contingent of police?” Fousia said, “I am sure that he would have slipped out with the help of some police officers.”

Nazeer reportedly told his interrogators that he was a trusted camp follower of the Muslim cleric Abdul Nasser Madhani even after his arrest in the Coimbatore blasts case..

The CPI(M) openly aligned with Madhani in the last parliamentary polls and supported his chosen candidate in the election. Party state secretary Pinarayi Vijayan had even shared dais with him.