However, what many are unaware is Memon was arrested in Nepal before being deported to India.How was the arrest made?
11 am. July 28, 1994.
A Pakistani Airlines from Karachi, Pakistan landed in Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA), Kathmandu. As passengers started emerging from the airlines and heading to TIA platform, a young male passenger soon came into the notice of police personnel deputed for the airport security.
The youth went to the luggage counter to collect his belongings. A policeman approached the youth and demanded his passport. The youth handed the police his Pakistani passport which identified him as Yousuf Ahmad Mohammed.
Unconvinced by the youth's identity, the police again demanded the former to open his suitcase. To not much astonishment, the police found out a cache of Pakistani passports. One passport identified the youth as none other than Yakub Abdul Razak Memon, one of the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts convicts.
"We were directed to make strict surveillance of Pakistani nationals back then," police personnel requesting not to be named recalled 22-year-old incident, "The youth was behaving something awkward."
The then airport security chief Ramesh Chand Thakuri briefed the incident to the then Inspector General of Police Moti Lal Bohora.
Bohora directed Thakuri to keep the youth in police custody. Thakuri later went on to become police chief.
The incident of the arrest of a youth with numbers of Pakistani passports in the airport didn't take long to reach to Indian Embassy, Lainchaur.
A team of Indian Embassy officials arrived to the airport in no time and identified the youth as the brother of Tiger Memon, one of the brain and financial arranger behind the 1993 Mumbai blasts that took 257 lives.
Indian embassy personnel began interrogation of Memon at the airport itself. Memon fled to Dubai and to Pakistan with his family after the Mumbai blasts.
He was then taken into custody by a team of Nepal Police personnel in plain clothes from the headquarters.
After the nine days, Indian media reported the arrest of Memon from a railway station in Mumbai.
"He was arrested during a random security check at the airport," confirming the arrest ex IGP of Nepal Police Thakuri added, "He was taken into custody by a special team of Nepal Police mobilized from the headquarters."
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