Akshardham hit plotter arrested
Ahmedabad: The alleged prime conspirator in the 2002 terror attack on Akshardham temple in Gandhinagar, Abdul Rashid Suleiman Ajmeri, was arrested at the city airport after he returned from Saudi Arabia on Saturday. Crime branch sleuths arrested Ajmeri based on intelligence inputs that he was travelling to the city.
Ahmedabad, Nov. 4: The alleged prime conspirator in the 2002 terror attack on Akshardham temple in Gandhinagar, Abdul Rashid Ajmeri, was arrested at the city airport after he arrived from Riyadh, a senior official said.
The arrest was made late on Saturday night.
“Ajmeri is one of the prime conspirators behind the Akshardham temple terror attack. He was arrested from the airport after he landed here late on Saturday night. We had inputs that he is travelling to Ahmedabad from Riyadh to meet his brother,” the DCP of Ahmadabad Crime Branch, Deepan Bhadran, said.
It was alleged that he had planned the terror attack and helped Lashkar-e-Tayyaba in carrying it out.
Ajmeri, an Ahmedabad resident, “had absconded to Riyadh before the terror act was committed,” Bhadran said, adding that more names may come out during his interrogation.
Two militants, allegedly with links to Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, had attacked the temple in Gandhinagar on September 24, 2002, killing 32 and injuring over 80 people.
The attackers were were killed by the National Security Guard commandos.