By IANS,
Mumbai : A man wanted for the 1993 serial bombings here was finally arrested Thursday, and he told the police that India’s most wanted man, Dawood Ibrahim, was living in Pakistan, a senior officer said.
The police swooped on Karimullah Khan Osan Khan, who carried a reward of Rs.500,000 on his head, Joint Police Commissioner (Crime) Rakesh Maria said.
According to Maria, Karimullah, 46, told his interrogators that Dawood Ibrahim, accused of masterminding the 1993 bombings, and several gangsters were living in Pakistan’s Karachi city.
Considered a close associate of Dawood Ibrahim, Karimullah was on the wanted list of the Interpol, the Central Bureau of Investigation and the Mumbai Police.
The past two years Karimullah lived and worked as a realty dealer in Nalla Sopara, a suburb in Thane district, adjacent to Mumbai. He was arrested following a tip off.
Among other things, Karimullah allegedly supervised the landings of weapons, ammunition and explosives on the Indian coast months prior to the 1993 blasts and also organised their discreet transfer to Mumbai.
The cargo landed in instalments in January and February 1993 at Shekhadi, Mhasla and other small fishing ports in Maharashtra.
After the blasts killed 257 people and injured nearly a thousand, Karimullah went underground for almost four months before allegedly making it to the Middle East in June 1993.
From there, he went to Karachi to join Dawood Ibrahim and other blasts accused such as Ejaaz Pathan and Tiger Yakub Memon.
Karimullah then left Karachi for Kathmandu in February 2006, from where he entered India by road and finally came to Mira Road suburb, also in Thane district.
He originally lived with his family in Cotton Green suburb of south-central Mumbai and eventually shifted to Nalla Sopara.
In the early 1990s, he was arrested for the murder of a businessman, Dilip Panchal, in south-central Mumbai. He was arrested but jumped bail. The police had been hunting for him since then, Maria said.