The Nepal police have arrested a man suspected of having links with the Mumbai triple bomb blasts that killed 24 people on July 13.
State-run Gorkhapatra daily reported on Tuesday that a 40-year-old man, Mohamad Zahid, was arrested on Monday from Baluwatar on the outskirts of Kathmandu.
He was being questioned by the anti-terrorist police unit, the daily said.
Zahid, a resident of Sarlahi district of southern Nepal bordering India, was allegedly involved in the July 13 Mumbai blasts, the daily said.
However, the police gave contradictory statements on the arrest, with its spokesman Navaraj Dhakal saying that a man named Zahid was arrested from Kathmandu under the Public Defence Act.
But he added, "We have no information about his links with Mumbai blasts."
Superintendent of Police Kedar Rijal, who is also the Kathmandu Metropolitan police chief, said that Zahid had been arrested from Kathmandu for fighting with the locals.
"We are further investigating the matter," he said.
Gorkhapatra, quoting unnamed police sources, said that Zahid, who was arrested by the anti-terror squad of the Nepal police, used text messages and calls to communicate with different people.
It said he had been operating a terror network from his rented room at Baluwatar.
If true, this could be the first arrest anywhere in connection with the serial blasts.
AFP, quoting an unnamed police officer, identified the arrested man as an Indian and said he had been held to explain text messages and phone calls made to someone in Mumbai.
No group has so far come forward to claim responsibility for the explosions that were the first attack on the city since the November 2008 strikes that had claimed 166 lives.
Nepal and India do not have an extradition treaty and a draft pact to this effect has been pending with Nepal for years.
The Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad said it has not been informed about the "arrest or detention" of any person in Nepal in connection with the terror strike.
"We have heard of reports about one person being arrested in Nepal on suspicion that he may have links with the blasts here. But we have not received any information about the arrest or detention of any person in this regard from central government officials," said an ATS official.
"If that was the case (that a suspect had been arrested) by now we would have been conveyed the message by the central government," he said in reply to a query.
The police had no idea about any person's arrest in Nepal in connection with the blasts, said a senior Crime Branch official.
