’93 Mumbai blasts suspect caught in Gujarat

The Gujarat Anti Terrorist Squad on Friday arrested key accused in the 1993 Mumbai serial bomb blasts, Ahmed Alam Sheikh alias Ahmed Lambu, off the Vapi-Valsad coast in the state, where he had been reportedly hiding for the last five years after returning from Dubai allegedly on a fake passport.

Gujarat ATS officials familiar with the matter said Ahmed had played an active role in the criminal conspiracy that was hatched by the Dawood gang and even harboured some other accused after the blasts.

Police said he was part of the team of Dawood’s men who were sent to Karachi in 1992 for training in handling arms and explosives for the blasts and added that Ahmed had fled to Dubai almost a year after the blasts and opened an electronic goods shop there.

According to police officers investigating in Mumbai blast case, Sheikh left Dubai in 2013 after suffering losses in his business and came to Gujarat on a fake passport, where he constantly changed his location to evade arrest.

His cover was finally blown off by a Gujarat ATS informer a few days ago.

“This is for the first time since 1993 that Ahmed has been arrested. Soon, after the blast he had fled to Dubai. The CBI also had announced ₹5 lakh reward for the informer,” said ATS superintendent of police Himanshu Shukla.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which is handling the blast case, had issued a lookout notice for Ahmed known to be a close of bomb blast main accused and fugitive don Dawood Ibrahim.

Ahmed who grew up in the Mussafir Khana locality of south Mumbai was part of the “Arjun Gang” that dabbled in gold smuggling at the Bombay docks in the mid-1980s. Later, he came in contact with Dawood’s henchman Mustafa Dossa, who is also an accused in the blast case.

On March 12, 1993, a series of 12 bomb blasts had rocked then Bombay city killing 257 people and injuring 713 others. The accused in this case have been tried in phases and several accused including Yakub Memon, Abu Salem and Mustafa Dossa had been convicted. Memon was hanged in 2013 while others were imprisoned for varying terms.

In the second phase of the trial, in June 2017, the designated TADA Court convicted six more accused including Mustafa Dossa and Abu Salem, and all of them have been sentenced to different terms of imprisonments.

“The ATS is not going to interrogate him,” Shukla said, adding that they will just hand him over to the CBI for further investigation.

AHMEDABAD/MUMBAI: