Cleared/MadanCoimbatore: Exactly six months after Hindu Munnani activist C Sasikumar was murdered, the CB-CID sleuths arrested a 29-year-old man from the city on Wednesday, marking a major breakthrough.J Syed Abudhakir, a resident of Rathinapuri, was produced in the chief judicial magistrate court and remanded in custody for 15 days. Police said Abudhakir has been booked under section 302 of the IPC for the murder of Sasikumar, but declined to divulge details of his role or the motive. Though police have questioned several people, this is the first arrest in the case.Abudhakir, a street hawker selling clothes at Kottaimedu, was a close friend of two key suspects in the case who have been absconding since the night of September 22, last year when Sasikumar was hacked to death near his house at Subramaniampalayam, Thudiyalur.The CB-CID produced Abudhakir in the court only after his father, Jaffar Ali, approached the court complaining that his son was missing since Monday night when a few policemen took him away.Jaffar Ali said Abudhakir was picked up by police at gunpoint around 11.30 pm on Monday from near Abida Hotel at Kottaimedu.Hearing his petition, the chief judicial magistrate issued a search order instructing the judicial magistrate III to submit a report on the whereabouts of Abudhakir. In an apparent attempt to pre-empt further court intervention, the CBCID sleuths produced him in the court within five hours from the time the search order was issued.The CB-CID Special Investigation Division, which took over the probe from the city police a month after the murder, had questioned more than 150 people so far but the breakthrough was elusive. They had reelased photographs of certain people who were at the murder spot and sought information about them. That attempt too hit a dead end. But a significant clue that the CB-CID cops got was that two men from city - B Saddam Hussain and A Mubarak, both from Sasibaba Colony - have been missing since the murder. On February 7 this year, police issued a lookout notice for the two, suspecting that they might attempt to flee the country.Teams were also sent to Kerala to find if they were hiding there. It was during the course of this hunt that police started questioning Abudhakir, a close friend of the absconding duo. Police said they had questioned Abudhakir 12 times in the past and there had been several contradictions in his responses."Abudhakir's mobile phone records showed that he frequented the murder spot in the days preceeding the attack. But when he was interrogated, he claimed that he had never visited the place,'' said a police officer. He had deleted several photos from his mobile phone when it was handed over to police.

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