BANGALORE, India – Police in the southern Indian city of Bangalore said on Monday they had arrested a doctor over an alleged plot by Islamist militants to assassinate prominent politicians.

Nayeem Siddiqui was detained late on Sunday in Davangere, 250 kilometres (155 miles) from Bangalore, in the latest of more than a dozen arrests after police said they had foiled the alleged assassination plan.

Siddiqui and the other suspects have been held under anti-terrorism laws for suspected links to the banned Lashkar-e-Taiba group, which is blamed for the 2008 Mumbai attacks, and the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HuJI) militant outfit.

“During questioning the police learnt that Siddiqui was providing logistic and financial support to the (other) accused,” Bangalore police commissioner Jyotiprakash Mirji told AFP.

Mirji said the detained Muslim men, aged between 21 and 30, were suspected of planning to kill politicians in Bangalore, the editor of a regional newspaper and a local reporter because of their “anti-Muslim bias”. (AFP)