NSA to be slapped on TN man who plotted to kill PM: Police

City Police Commissioner K Periaiah signed the order to detain Mohammed Rafiq, arrested last month over the claim, under the NSA and the orders would be served on him on Tuesday, police said.

The decision to invoke the NSA was taken after a detailed enquiry and searches in the house of Rafiq, who was also a convict in the 1998 bomb blast case and had completed his jail term.

During the investigations, it was found that there was a plot to create communal tension by targeting Modi, police said. 53-year-old Rafiq was arrested on April 23 and remanded to judicial custody after a recorded telephonic conversation went viral on social media in which he was purportedly heard saying that he is planning to kill Modi.

Police had then registered a case under section 506 (i) of IPC (Criminal Intimidation) after initial enquiry suggested that his plot claim might be only to scare away the transport contractor Prakash with whom he was speaking on the call.

Rafiq’s conversation with the contractor mainly related to finances about vehicles.

Suddenly, he was heard saying, “We have decided to eliminate (Prime Minister) Modi, as we were the ones who had planted bombs when (former Deputy Prime Minster L K) Advani visited the city in 1998,” as quoted by the police.

The city was rocked by a series of bomb blasts in February 1998 in which 58 people were killed and over 200 were injured.

Rafiq, lodged in the Central prison here since his arrest last month, is presently admitted to the Coimbatore Medical College Hospital for some heart problem.