New Delhi : The Delhi Police Special Cell has arrested a Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) operative from Uttar Pradesh, an officer said here on Monday.
The alleged terrorist, identified as Irfan Ahmad, 50, was arrested on May 7 from Bahraich district in Uttar Pradesh, officials said.
Irfan, police said, also hails from Bahraich but presently stays in Nepal’s Bhairahawa — a municipality near the Indian border on the outer Terai plains of Nepal.
“He was on the run for over 15 years,” Special Commissioner of Police (Special Cell) S.N. Srivastava told IANS.
Irfan’s name, the official said, first figured on the radar of Indian security agencies as the man who had planted bombs in two Rajdhani trains, Delhi – Howrah and Howrah – Delhi, passing through Kanpur Railway Station, in the intervening night of December 5 and 6 in 1993 — a year after the Babri mosque demolition.
He along with his associates had also executed bomb blasts at the same time on various trains which were reported from different cities like Kanpur, Hyderabad, Indergarh, Surat, Lucknow and Gulbarga.
Initially, police said, Irfan was held on Jan 17, 1994 by the Special Cell of Delhi Police under charges of Explosive Substances Act and Arms Act but later handed over to the CBI, which was investigating the train serial bombings.
The CBI subsequently arrested his 15 other associates Jalees Ansari, Fazl ur Rehman, Mohammed Amin, Salim Ansari, Jahruddin, Nisarudin, Shamsudin, Azeemudin, Mohammed Yusuf, Aizaz Akbar, Ashfaque Khan, Habib Ahmed, Jamal Alvi, Mohammed Afaq, Abre Rehmat Ansari in the bombings and they were sentenced life imprisonment on February 24, 2005.
During his imprisonment in Tihar jail between 1996 and 1999, the official said, Irfan became a close friend of Aasif Reza Khan, an Indian Mujahideen terrorist who was later killed in a police encounter in Gujarat.
While Irfan was being shifted to Ajmer jail to stand trial of the 1993 bombings case, Aasif Reza, who was then about to get released, had asked him to find a way out of the jail and meet him as soon as possible in Kolkata.
“In 2001, Irfan got four days parole to attend his brother’s marriage in Behraich. He went straight to Kolkata and met Aasif Reza Khan. Since then he has been on the run,” said Srivastava.
In Kolkata, Aasif introduced him to his brother Amir Reza Khan– the current co-chief of Indian Mujahideen reportedly operating along with the organisation’s head Riyaz and Iqbal Bhatkal.
“He learnt operating e-mail accounts which were the primary mode of communication for the terrorists. When time came to expand the activities of Indian Mujahideen, he was asked to go to Kathmandu and get himself entrenched there as the Nepal head of the organisation,” said Srivastava.
His arrest, the official said, is a major achievement in the continuing fight against terrorism.
“His interrogations are likely to throw valuable light on the scope and spread of both Lashker-e-Taiba and Indian Mujahideen.
“We are likely to expose many more sleeper modules and logistical hubs of these terrorist organisations spread across India as well as in Nepal,” Srivastava added.