Key LeT suspect is caught in Kenya

[Vinod Gopani]

New Delhi/Hyderabad, July 21: The Kenyan police has arrested one of India's most-wanted terror suspects, Abdul Karim Tunda, who ran a module of the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT) terror group.
He is an accused in 1993 serial blasts and the July 11 train blasts in Mumbai.Tunda had allegedly masterminded 33 bomb blasts in New Delhi and adjoining areas between December 1996 and January 1998 in which 21 people were killed and 400 others injured, according to the agency report.

Tunda alias Baba is the godfather of terror operatives in Hyderabad and is wanted for several blast cases, including the train blasts of December 5-6, 1993, the Sai Baba temple blast in Dilsukhnagar and the October 2005 suicide blast at the commissioner's task force office. The anti-terrorism police in Mombassa, Kenya, said it had detained Tunda and would turn him over to prosecutors for possible extradition to India, an agency report said.

A senior police official told AFP on condition of anonymity, he is wanted for the bombings in Mumbai. He will be handed over because he is on the wanted list.Investigative agencies in India will probe any possible role he may have had in the latest serial blasts in Mumbai once he is brought back to the country, sources said.

A request for ascertaining reports about Tunda's arrest had been made through Interpol and the response is awaited, a CBI spokesman told reporters here. The CBI had secured an Interpol red corner notice against Tunda after he fled the country in the mid-1990s. He also carries a cash reward of Rs 3 lakhs on his head.

Nicknamed Tunda for a handicap in his left arm sustained while making a bomb, Tunda's association in separatist activities predates his association with Lashkar. Officials of Research and Analysis Wing had claimed two years back that Tunda had been killed in a train accident in Bangladesh.

Police officials in Hyderabad said one of Tunda's top priorities was the liberation of Hyderabad.Tunda is also accused in, among others, the Ganesh temple blast plot. Tunda had a close associate in dreaded terrorist Azam Ghauri of Nizamabad who was shot dead after the 2003 Sai Baba temple blast. They floated Tanzeem Islahul Muslimeen (TIM) that operated from Mumbai and Hyderabad.

A counterintelligence official said, They roped in Dr Jalees Ansari of Mumbai and carried out explosions including seven blasts in trains on December 6, 1993.He said Tunda escaped to Bangladesh and Ghauri to Saudi Arabia.

After this Tunda shifted his focus to North India and handed over the south to Ghauri. Tunda sent Saleem Junaid of Pakistan who began the first module in Hyderabad,the official said. Dr Ansari was convicted for the 1993 train blasts. Junaid, who was arrested, was recently shifted to Vishakpatnam for deportation to Pakistan.