Seventy-year-old Tunda, an expert bomb-maker of terror outfit LeT (Lashkar-e-Taiba), was arrested on Friday at around 3 pm from the Banwasa-Mahendarnagar border with Nepal and brought to Delhi. Tunda was one of 20 terrorists India had demanded the Pakistani government to hand over after the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack.
This list includes LeT chief Hafiz Saeed, Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Maulana Masood Azhar and Dawood Ibrahim, among others.
Police said Tunda was wanted in 21 cases in Delhi alone that were committed in 1994 and in 1996-1998.[break]
He was carrying a Pakistani passport (AC 4413161) issued on 23 January, 2013 in the name of Abdul Quddus, special commissioner of police (special cell) SN Shrivastava said addressing a press conference in Delhi on Friday.
Abdul Karim Tunda worked as a carpenter, scarp dealer and cloth merchant till he attained the age of 40 years before becoming a radicalized jehadi militant.
His younger brother Abdul Malik (a carpenter) is reportedly the only immediate family member alive in India.
There were conflicting reports over the circumstances in which Tunda was arrested, with claims that he was deported from a Gulf country.
Media reports also quoted sources saying Tunda left Karachi around 10 days ago and reached Kathmandu via Dubai.
Intelligence agencies were tracking him from Dubai and gave a tip-off to the special cell of Delhi Police, which finally nabbed him from the border area. Tunda was produced before a duty magistrate on Friday. The court sent him to three day´s police custody.
Tunda is reportedly also wanted in several cases of serial blasts in trains in Hyderabad, Gulbarga, Surat and Lucknow on December 5 and 6, 1993, he said.
“Tunda had planned to carry out bombings in and around Delhi in 2010 at the time of the Commonwealth Games, but the plan was timely thwarted with the arrest of his accomplices who were supposed to carry out the attack,” said Shrivastava.
Who is Tunda?
-- Syed Abdul Karim alias Tunda, an expert bomb maker of terror outfit LeT, is accused of masterminding over 40 bombings in India. He may throw some light on Lashkar-e-Taiba´s operations in India.
-- A resident of Pilkhuwa in Uttar Pradesh´s Ghaziabad district, Tunda was one of the 20 terrorists whose extradition India had demanded from Pakistan after the 2001 attack on Parliament. This list included Lashkar chief Hafiz Mohammad Saeed and his Jaish-e-Mohammad counterpart Maulana Azhar Masood Alvi.
-- Tunda, against whom an Interpol Red Corner notice was issued in 1996, was apparently deported from one of the Gulf countries and his arrest was affected at the Indo-Nepal border.
-- India´s CBI had charged Tunda with organizing LeT´s major terror attacks outside Jammu and Kashmir -- a series of 43 bombings in Mumbai, Hyderabad, Delhi, Rohtak and Jalandhar in which over 20 persons were killed and over 400 injured.
-- He had also triggered explosions on inter-city trains on December 6, 1993 that claimed two lives.
--Besides being an expert in bomb making, Tunda had a major hand in spreading LeT´s network outside Jammu and Kashmir.
--The hunt for him virtually ended at one point when it was believed that he had been killed in a blast in Bangladesh
(with inputs from PTI)
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