‘Riyaz Bhatkal visited city thrice in two months before 2008 blasts’

Ahmedabad: Senior crime branch officials have said that Abdul Subhan Qureshi (48) — an Indian Mujahideen (IM) founder member and the mastermind of the July 2008 Ahmedabad blasts — has confessed that Riyaz Bhatkal had visited Ahmedabad thrice in two months before the blasts. Riyaz and his brother Iqbal were other founder members of IM.
“While Iqbal stayed in Pune and coordinated with other IM operatives to transport stolen cars and explosives to Surat and Ahmedabad for the blasts, Riyaz stayed in Ahmedabad with Subhan and Kayamuddin Kapadia at Vatva and at a rented bungalow in in Danilimda where the bombs were assembled,” a senior crime branch official said.

Riyaz, Iqbal, and another IM figure Amir Raza Khan are supposedly based in Pakistan, sheltered by the ISI.

Crime branch officials said that like Yasin Bhatkal, another key member of IM, who was arrested in 2013 from the Indo-Nepal border near Uttar Pradesh, Subhan is a tough nut to crack.

“During interrogation, he did not hesitate to tell us that he and Bhatkal brothers celebrated the Ahmedabad serial blasts, which killed 56 and injured over 200,” an investigator said.

“He said he and the Bhatkals regret that the bombs planted in Surat did not go off due to a technical glitch in the timer chips.” Subhan was arrested by the special cell of the Delhi Police from Ghazipur on the outskirts of Delhi on January 22, and brought to Ahmedabad on a transfer warrant in the serial blasts case. He was taken in an armoured vehicle to identify the spots where had stayed in the city and delivered radical speeches.

Crime branch sources said Subhan had left the city ten days before the blasts and stayed at different locations in Jharkhand and Bihar before slipping into Nepal through Raxual border in 2009.

“Subhan masked his real identify and worked in a local school as an English teacher. He had travelled to Saudi Arabia twice on a passport issued on fake identity,” a crime branch official said.

“We are probing the reasons for his Saudi Arabia trips.”