IM cofounder, Guj blasts mastermind held after gunfight
BREAKTHROUGH Militant addressed by comrades as India’s Osama Bin Laden had ~4 lakh bounty on his head
NEW DELHI: One of India’s most wanted criminals, the alleged co-founder of terror group Indian Mujahideen (IM) and the suspected mastermind behind the 2008 Ahmedabad serial blasts, has been arrested by Delhi police, senior officers said on Monday.
Abdul Subhan Qureshi, alias Tauqeer, was apprehended around 8.30 pm on Saturday after a brief gunfight near the paper market in east Delhi’s Ghazipur locality, deputy commissioner of police( special cell) Pr a mod Singh Kushwah told reporters.
The 46-year-old, suspected of being involved in a series of IM terror strikes between 2006 and 2008, had been on the run for the last 10 years.
In the deadliest attack, 23 bombs went off in Ahmedabad on July 26, 2008, when 56 people were killed and over 200 injured.
“We had received information that Qureshi was en route to Uttar Pradesh in a white Santro car and before that he would meet one of his old SIMI sympathisers in Delhi,” said Kushwah.
The Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) is a banned Islamist organisation that is considered tobe the I M’ s fore runner.
Qureshi was listed in the National Investigation Agency’s (NIA) list of most wanted criminals and had a ~4 lakh reward on his head. Inter pol Red
Notices had also been issued against him. “He is believed to be the “al-Arabi” who signed the emails issued by the IM after terror strikes. Qureshi was in India to indoctrinate unemployed Muslim youth to fill the space left void by the fall of top IM leaders and revive its weak network,” said MM Oberoi, special commissioner of police (special cell).
A special cell officer said Q ur es hi—said to be the I M’ s top bomb maker—also held the top rank in the SIM I after the arrest of its general sec reta rySafd ar Nagori from M P’ s Indore in March 2008.
The bombs used in the Ahmeda bad blasts were similar in scale and style to the blasts in Bengaluru the day before.
Qureshi was allegedly also
instrumental in planting 29 improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in 2008 in Surat that did not explode because of malfunctioning of the timer device. “The un exploded IEDs were recovered between July 27 and August 3 from different locations by Gujarat police. Qureshi is also a suspect in the July 2006 Mumbai train blasts,” said Kushwah.
Police said at least 14 rounds were exchanged before Q ur es hi’ s capture but no one from either side was injured. A pistol and some identity documents were seized. Before the 2008 Gujarat attacks, he set up camps where radicalised young men were taught rock climbing and swimming, bomb making and use of arms.