By TCN Staff Reporter,
Hyderabad: A software engineer working with HCL Hyderabad is being arrested by Mumbai police as a main conspirator of 2002 Ghatkopar bomb blast.
Siddique Taj-ul Islam Kazi was arrested by three plainclothes officials of Mumbai crime branch from his house in Al Hasanath colony of Tolichowki in the suburb of Hyderabad on Wednesday night.
His family which was having no idea about identity of those police officers filed a complaint of Kidnaping in the Hamayunagar police station. Later on Friday, family officially received a phone call from Mumbai police crime branch confirming the arrest of Siddique in Ghatkopar bomb blast. It was only on Saturday that Hyderabad Police Commissioner Anurag Sharma confirmed the arrest but made it clear that Mumbai Police carried out their operation without informing Hyderabad Police.
In 2002 a bomb exploded in a BEST bus at Ghatkopar in Mumbai, which killed two persons and injured nearly 30. In 2005 all the eight accused in the bomb blast were acquitted by the special POTA court. The most disturbing part of the bomb blast case was its alleged main accused another software engineer from Prabhani 27 year old Syed Khaja Younis was killed in police custody due to third degree torture by Assistant Police Inspector Sachin Waze. Waze covered up the custodial death and made up the story that Younis escaped from their custody to make him an absconder. But later an enquiry by CID found out that Younis’s body was burnt at a farm in Asangaon in Raigad district to cover up custodial death. Sachin Waze was put under suspension; he later quit the police force and joined Shiv Sena.
The latest accused in this paradoxical case Siddique was a native of Aurangabad district in Maharashtra. Before working in Hyderabad, Siddique has worked in software companies at Chennai and in Bangalore. Siddique is married and have five daughters.
Mumbai police has claimed that Siddique was a member of SIMI in Aurangabad and escaped to Hyderabad after the bomb blasts as he was allegedly one of the conspirators of the blast. Mumbai police has even gone on to allege that Siddque was working on a fake name in HCL. But his family claimed that his full name is Siddique Taj-ul Islam Kazi, But he uses short form of his name Taj Siddiqui at work place.
His family has also refuted the claim of Mumbai police that Siddiqui was a SIMI member; his family claimed that Siddiqui is a member of SIO student wing of Jamat-e-Islami a legal organization. But till now SIO has not come forward to accept siddiqui as its member or even condemning the arrest.