This story is from January 23, 2018

IM co-founder who plotted Ahmedabad blasts nabbed

IM co-founder who plotted Ahmedabad blasts nabbed
Abdul Subhan Qureshi
NEW DELHI: After a decadelong hunt, Abdul Subhan Qureshi, the alleged mastermind of the Ahmedabad serial blasts, which killed 59 people in 2008, and a conspirator in a series of blasts across India from 2006 to 2011, has finally been arrested by the Delhi Police special cell.
Qureshi, aka Tauqeer, 46, a computer engineer who quit his MNC job in the 1990s, had headed the Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) after the arrest of its general secretary, Safdar Nagori, and co-founded the Indian Mujahideen in early 2000 with the Bhatkals.
He was the man who sent emails, signed al-Arbi, owning up to the serial blasts. Tauqeer was arrested from the Delhi-UP border near Ghazipur by the special cell after a shootout on January 20, special commissioner M M Oberoi said. He was on the Interpol list of absconders apart from the mostwanted list issued by the NIA and police of Delhi, UP, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Kerala and Gujarat.
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While cops officially remained tightlipped on whether Tauqeer had any plans to strike in Delhi & NCR, sources have confirmed to TOI that the man was up to something sinister.
He had allegedly fled to Nepal after the Ahmedabad blasts. NIA had declared a reward of Rs 4 lakh on him in 2012. From Nepal, he is believed to have gone to Saudi Arabia in 2015 to raise funds.
Tauqeer planned to revive weak IM network: Cops
Upon his return in Nepal in June 2017, Tauqeer began to recruit youths to wage war against the country, police said.
They said Tauqeer was planning the revival of the weakened and scattered network of Indian Mujahedeen. “He was indoctrinating unemployed youth among the community to fill the space left void by the fall of the top leaders of Indian Mujahedeen,” DCP (special cell) Pramod Kushwaha told TOI.

Tauqeer was tracked down after the cell had been tipped off last month about one Rehman’s visits to Noida, western UP and Ghaziabad to meet an associate whose identity the cell has withheld.
“On Saturday night, a crack team led by ACP Govind Sharma and inspectors Chandrika Prashad and Amul Tyagi was formed and Tauqeer was intercepted near the paper market in Ghazipur,” said Kushwaha.
Tauqeer dodged one of the police cars but drove into a lane where his way was blocked by another police vehicle. He opened fire at the team but was overpowered, cops claimed.
Sources say the white Santro car used by Tauqeer was stolen from sector 58 in Noida. Cops are ascertaining how it reached him. Documents including a fake Aadhaar card and a diary containing phone numbers were seized from him.
He has been taken on remand for 14 days after being produced before chief metropolitan magistrate Deepak Sehrawat. After that, NIA and police of different states will take him into custody.
“During interrogation, he has claimed that after leaving Gujarat, he fled to Ranchi and took shelter at the residence of a SIMI operative. From Ranchi, he went to Chhapra in Bihar and then headed to Raxaul on the Indo-Nepal border. He crossed over to Nepal and reached Birat Nagar where he met one Nizam Khan, a SIMI sympathiser, who ran an NGO, Nepal Development Society,” Kushwaha added.
“With Nizam Khan’s help, he started to live in Birat Nagar and also started to teach in a Christian Boarding school there. He stayed in Batta from Oct 2008 to Jan 2009 and then moved to Gorkha. He also managed to procure a fake voter ID card through Khan and remained in Nepal till 2015.
During this period, he again came in touch with Riyaz Bhatkal who motivated him to come to Riyadh, Saudia Arabia for arranging finances and to revive IM in India, police said. He procured a Nepali passport in the name of Abdul Rehman and in February-March 2015, went to Saudi Arabia on that passport.
For cover, he worked as a salesman in various stores and also had meetings with many SIMI/IM sympathisers there. He returned in June 2017. Since then, he started to visit India to resurrect the cadres on the behest of ISI and Bhatkal brothers.
It is said that Tauqeer used to reach the target city two days before the blast. On July 11, 2006, Tauqeer was present in Mumbai when his cadres executed the serial blasts in local trains in Mumbai.
Tauqeer then took the initiative to engineer the 2008 serial blasts in Gujarat and met Riyaz Bhatkal in Pune in May 2008 to arrange for logistics. After causing mass casualties there, IM operatives planted IEDs at several places in Surat.
The IEDs did not explode due to malfunctioning of the timer device and were later diffused. Police recovered 29 unexploded IEDs between July 27 and August 3. After this, Tauqeer went underground and switched to recruiting cadres in Bihar and Jharkhand.
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