Wanted terrorist Tunda arrested
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One of India's most wanted terrorist, Syed Abdul Karim alias Tunda, accused of masterminding over 40 bombings in the country, has been arrested by Delhi police from the Indo-Nepal border after he was apparently deported from one of the Gulf countries.
Seventy-year-old Tunda, an expert bomb maker of terror outfit Lashkar-e-Toiba, would be produced before a court by Delhi police later Saturday, official sources said.
Describing Tunda as a major catch, the security agencies say he would be able to throw some light on Lashkar-e-Taiba's operations in India. The details about his arrest were sketchy but Tunda, against whom an Interpol Red Corner notice was issued in 1996, was apparently deported from one of the Gulf countries and his arrest was effected at the Indo-Nepal border.
A resident of Pikhuwa in Uttar Pradesh's Ghaziabad district, Tunda was one of the 20 terrorists whose extradition India had demanded from Pakistan after the 2001 attack on Parliament House. This list included Lashkar chief Hafiz Mohammad Saeed and his Jaish-e-Mohammad counterpart Maulana Azhar Masood Alvi.
The CBI had charged Karim with organising LeT's major terror attacks outside of Jammu and Kashmir — a series of 43 bombings in Mumbai, Hyderabad, Delhi, Rohtak and Jalandhar in which over 20 persons were killed and over 400 injured. Tunda had also triggered explosions on inter-city trains on December 6, 1993 that claimed two lives.
Besides being an expert in bomb making, Tunda had a major hand in spreading Laskhar-e-Taiba's network outside Jammu and Kashmir. Before joining the ranks of the terror outfit, Tunda ran a homoeopathic shop in the early 1980's.
The sources say that though Tunda was not directly involved in perpetrating bombings after 1998, he acted as mentor for a younger generation of Lashkar operatives, financing and organising operations across India. He was known as Tunda (handicapped) after he lost his left hand in a bomb-making accident.
Many stories had been floated earlier about his whereabouts and the hunt for him virtually ended at one point when it was believed that he had been killed in a blast in Bangladesh.
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