Gujarat ATS arrests four men wanted in 1993 Bombay serial blasts case
Darpan News Desk IANS, 17 May, 2022 10:20 AM
Ahmedabad, May 17 (IANS) The Gujarat Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) has arrested four persons for their alleged involvement in the Bombay serial bomb blasts, which killed 257 persons and injured over 700 others on March 12, 1993.
Based on a specific information about the presence of four suspicious persons in Ahmedabad, a team was formed under Deputy Superintendent of Police, Kanubhai Patel, which detained the four persons from the Sardarnagar area on the evening of May 12.
Initially, the four accused were booked for carrying forged Indian passports.
The arrested persons had Indian passports with the following names -- Javed Basha alias Qasim Saab, Syed Abbas Sharif alias Syed Abbas, Syed Yasin alias Abdul Rahman, and Mohammad Yusuf Ismail alias Sheikh Ismail Noor Mohammad. They had obtained these persons using fake address documents.
As per the ATS, after their real identities were revealed, the police found that the four accused were allegedly involved in the 1993 serial bomb blasts.
The real identities of the accused persons were found to be Abu Bakar alias Abdul Gafoor (Javed Basha); Syed Qureshi alias Rahat Jan Qureshi (Syed Abbas Sharif); Mohammad Shoaib Qureshi alias Shoaib Bawa (Syed Yasin); and Mohammad Yusuf Ismail alias Yusuf Bhatka (Mohammad Yusuf Ismail).
Sources said that all the four persons were wanted for their alleged involvement in the 1993 serial blasts, and were on the run to this day.
They were all members of a smuggling gang run by Mohammad Ahmed Dosa alias Mohammad Dosa, and were involved in the smuggling of gold and silver in India in the 1980s and 1990s.
The accused had gone to the Middle East in February 1993, a month before the blasts, and attended a meeting organised by Dawood Ibrahim, in which the latter instructed them to go to Pakistan for arms training.
Abu Bakr, Syed Qureshi, Mohammad Shoaib and Mohammad Yusuf had then gone to Pakistan, where they were trained in manufacturing of improvised explosive devices (IEDs), after which they returned to India.
Abu Bakr also played a role in disposing of another consignment of weapons that had arrived in Maharashtra by sea, just days after the serial blasts.
In the aftermath of the blasts, these individuals used fake address documents to fraudulently obtain Indian passports with different names and identities and fled India.
All four of them were declared guilty by the special TADA court in Mumbai, while the Interpol issued a Red Corner Notice in their name.
As per sources, ATS officials will hand over the four accused to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which is investigating the Mumbai serial blasts case, after their remand period is over.
The flight IX-1202 with 183 passengers, including an infant, arrived at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport at around 5.40 a.m. The evacuees were received by Union Minister of State for Railways Raosaheb Danve-Patil with flowers and words of solace as they trooped out lugging their belongings.
"Indian students are being pushed out of trains, they are not allowed to board, if questioned they are being assaulted and guns are being pointed at them,". There are many incidents where Indians were asked to leave bunkers. Ukraninans are telling Indian students that India is not supporting them and why should they help them?
The two leaders reviewed the situation, especially in the city of Kharkiv where many Indian students are stuck, and discussed the safe evacuation of Indian nationals from the conflict areas, an MEA statement said.
Officials said the administration was in touch with the families of 32 students belonging to the Jammu division who are stranded in Ukraine. Officials said nine evacuation flights have so far brought back around 2,000 Indians stranded in Ukraine since February 26.
Bhullar was convicted and sentenced to death in 2011 in the 1993 Delhi bomb blasts case. In March 2014, however, the Supreme Court commuted his death sentence to life imprisonment owing to his ill health.
An official in Guwahati said that the Assam government so far prepared a list of 160 such students and the process of evacuating them has been going on in coordination with the External Affairs Ministry.
