KOLKATA: Neighbours didn’t get a whiff of the designs of this lanky bearded Yousuf Seikh , allegedly the Indian point man in Khagragarh blast case.

Like most other children of Krishnabati village near Simulia, Yousuf read up to Class VIII before he went to a Deoband madrassa in Uttar Pradesh in 2004 where he had baptism with fire.

Investigators suspect Yousuf went to the Deoband madrassa prodded by his father-in-law who wanted him to complete the three-year training at Deoband before marrying Ayesha. Ten years down the line, Yousuf turned into a hardened terrorist, the Indian point man in the Khagragarh blast.

“My brother was an introvert. He never had a tiff with anybody. He kept himself busy with his religious work and hardly had any time for his family. This is a conspiracy against him,” said Yousuf’s brother Nazrul. NIA arrested Nazrul on Thursday. NIA has reasons to believe that Yousuf had strong links with a Bangladeshi terror outfit as also Islamic fundamentalist organizations in the country.

Sources in the district police said Yousuf initially got the Bangladeshi links from his father-in-law who came from Bangladesh in 2001 and started staying at Nawpara, three kilometers away from Yousuf’s Krishnabati village.

“He went to Uttar Pradesh to take training for three years and came back to his village in 2007. After coming back, he started giving religious training to local youths. In 2009, he married Ayesha, a local girl he knew before going to Uttar Pradesh. After the blast both Yousuf and Ayesha went missing. We have also gone to Ayesha’s parental home at Nawpara but that has remained locked,” said a district police officer. Sources in the district police said some suspicious people were present in his marriage in 2009 who were not local. “We are looking into the details of the guest list,” the officer said.

Investigators have come to know that Yousuf came close to some Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh leaders during his three-year stay in Deoband. “When he came back to the village, he was a changed man. I can still remember that Yousuf stopped talking to his childhood friend only because of the fact that the latter didn’t perform his daily religious rites,” said Jahangir Seikh , a villager.

National Investigation Agency officers traced three SIM cards of Yousuf and are trying to find out whether he had used more numbers. “The call details record of these cards show that Yousuf made several calls not only to Shakil Gazi or Sobhan Mondal — the duo killed in Khargagarh blast — but he also made numerous calls to people in Khulna and Rajshahi districts in Bangladesh, and Tamilnadu, Jammu and Kashmir, Mumbai and Kerala within the country,” an investigating officer said. The officers are now trying to analyze the calls.

The NIA has also sought last six months’ transaction details from a Canara Bank branch in Nigon of all the bank accounts of Yousuf and his wife Ayesha. NIA officers came to know that Yousuf, the principal of the Simulia madrassa, had 48 bank accounts, while there were 21 bank accounts on the name of his wife. Yousuf and Burhan Seikh purchased twenty five cottahs for setting up a second madrassa at Tamilpukur about two kilometres away from Simulia. They also bought 6 cottahs in Nigon. The NIA has seized all land records and has started probe.

“He owns 12 bighas. We don’t know how he managed to buy so much of land and build the madrassa. We are probing the money trail,” an NIA investigating officer said.

