Hyderabd, August 23: Even as the trial in the most terrifying twin blasts case of Lumbini Park and Gokul Chat Bhandar is awaited, manhunt for Indian
Mujahideen founder Riyaz Bhatkal and his associates continues across the country.
Bhatkal, Abdul Subhan Tauqueer and a few other kingpins in serial bomb blasts in Hyderabad,
Mumbai and a couple of other places are on the run. They have been hit hard by the arrest of their key players in different parts of the country. “We expect to catch them soon”, a senior intelligence officer told.
The probe into the August 25, 2007 blasts was vigorously pursued by the Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the city police and the State Counter Intelligence Cell. The interrogation of some top members of the Indian Mujahideen arrested in Pune and Maharashtra led the state sleuths to some of the main players who had planned and executed the terror game in Hyderabad. They were brought to Hyderabad, questioned intensively and made to reconstruct the action that had claimed 43 lives and left more than 70 persons injured.
Octopus, the anti-terror agency set up in the wake of these blasts and the Mecca Masjid bomb explosion, was asked to complete the investigation and prepare charge sheets against the accused who are now awaiting trial.
According to sources at Octopus, the blasts were carried out by the Indian Mujahideen operatives that included its founder Riyaz Bhatkal. The main accused in the case are Anique Ahmed Sayeed, Akbar Ismael Choudhry and Bhatkal. The other accused are Mohammed Israr Sadiq Sheikh, Farooq Sharfuddin and Amir Raza. Bhatkal and Raza are absconding.
Recalling the terror strike, a police officer who was associated with the investigation, said that the accused were filled with the feeling of revenge. The list of injustices, as they perceived, is long. It begins with the demolition of Babri Masjid of 1992 and goes over to the killings of Muslims in Gujarat riots of 2002.
They told interrogators that they also wanted to avenge the killing of Mujahid Saleem by Gujarat police in Hyderabad in 2004. They believed that the bomb at Mecca Masjid was planted by Hindu extremists to kill a large number of Muslims. They were thoroughly brainwashed and prepared to carry out acts of terrorism.
“Riyaz Bhatkal himself had come to Hyderabad to select three points, Lumbini Park, Gokul Chat Bhandar and an overbridge in Dilsukhnagar where the bombs had to be planted. Bhatkal was also part of the execution plan. He went into Gokul Chat Bhandar, had snacks and put a powerful bomb at the base of a large gas cylinder while making an exit.
Anique hid his bomb under a chair in Lumbini Park and Akbar went to the crowded Dilsukhnagar overbridge and placed his plastic bag containing the bomb on the handle of a motorcycle. The bombs at the park and Chat Bhandar exploded as timed while the Dilsukhnagar bomb failed and was found by a policeman later”, the officer said. Octopus has made three different cases out of these, though related to one another. One is on Lumbini Park, the other on Gokul Chat Bhander and the third one on Dilsukhnagar.
A special prosecutor will be appointed soon to take up these cases as the trial begins, a source at the Octopus said.
–Agencies