29 yrs on run, four '93 serial blasts plotters held in Ahm

Four conspirators of the 1993 serial blasts in Mum-bai who had been evading law-keepers for 29 years have been arrested near Ahmedabad airport by the Gujarat anti-terrorism squad (ATS).

Abu Bakar, Sayyed Qureshi, Mohd Shoeb Qureshi, and Mohd Yusuf Ismail Shaikh alias Yusuf Bhakta, all residents of Mumbai, were arrested on May 12 following a tipoff. “They have been remanded to seven days in police custody,” said additional DGP (ATS) Amit Vishwakarma.

Sources in the ATS said the four had arrived in Ahmedabad four to five days before they were arrested. It was not clear why they were in Gujarat, but an ATS officer ventured that they had come to renew their passports.

The ATS has booked them for using forged documents to obtain passports to flee the country in 1995. For the 1993 blasts, a special Terrorist and Destructive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA) court had declared them “proclaimed offenders”, said ATS DIG Deepan Bhadran.

Vishwakarma said they will be handed over to the CBI, which is investigating the serial blasts in which 257 people were killed. “Interpol had issued a red corner notice against them. So they had used forged documents to hide their identities,” he added.