India will ask Pak to hand over Riyaz Bhatkal
Dreaded terrorist and founder of Indian Mujahideen ( IM), Mohammed Riyaz Bhatkal, 42, who masterminded Hyderabad’s Dilsukhnagar bomb blasts that claimed 18 lives and injured 132 on 21 February 2013, will be India’s latest most wanted criminal operating out of Pakistan. Riyaz is believed to have taken shelter in Karachi since 2007. Thus, for Indian agencies, Riyaz Bhatkal, who belongs to the coastal Bhatkal town in Karnataka, will join other criminal masterminds such as Dawood Ibrahim on the list of “most wanted” terrorists who have found sanctuary in Pakistan, and who Pakistan must hand over to India.
Five other IM operatives directed and tutored by Riyaz in executing the bomb blasts in Dilsukhnagar, a busy marketplace, were tried and convicted by a special court of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Tuesday, that is 13 December. The court will pronounce the quantum of punishment on Monday. The sentence may range from death penalty to life imprisonment, as per NIA sources. The five convicted IM terrorists are: Yasin Bhatkal, 34, Asadullah Akhtar, 32, Aijaz Sheikh 29, Zia-Ur-Rahman, 29 and Mohammad Tahseen Akhtar, 28. They were all arrested by the NIA from different places, including neighbouring Nepal in the past three years, and have confessed to how they were instructed and commandeered by Riyaz who is hiding in Pakistan.
The NIA, which was formed specifically to probe terrorist cases meticulously planned from across the border, has won its first court battle as the special court set up to try the case, convicted all the five IM operatives arrested by the NIA. Though Riyaz is the brain behind the blasts, the NIA couldn’t get him convicted as he is hiding in Pakistan.
NIA director Sharad Ku- mar who flew to Hyderabad to witness the court verdict delivered in the high security Charlapalli Central Prison on the city outskirts on Tuesday held a meeting with his officials on the next steps to bring Riyaz to justice in the case. If all the convicts are to hang for their crime, so is the case with Riyaz, said NIA sources.
NIA’s special public prosecutor V. Surender Rao told The Sunday Guardian that he would be seeking death penalty for all of them as “the bomb blasts had wiped out many innocent lives belonging to all religions and had destroyed the lives of over 130 innocent people for no fault of theirs”. “They (IM terrorists) deserve the maximum punishment,” he said.
Riyaz Bhatkal, alias Ismail Shabandari, is among the top Indian radical Muslim operatives who take directions from Pakistan’s ISI in planning violent attacks against their homeland. NIA sources told this newspaper that Riyaz had differed with the other founder members of the IM who believed that fighting for an Islamic state was their primary concern since the early 2000s.
That was the reason why Riyaz split with the other chief architect of IM, Shafi Armar, who fled to Syria in 2008 to fight for an Islamic state and has been luring Indian Muslims since then. Pakistan’s ISI had weaned away a section of the IM from their parent outfit, SIMI ( Students Is-