Indian Mujahideen co-founder Yasin Bhatkal arrested, was based in Nepal as fake Unani doctor

NEW DELHI: Yasin Bhatkal, one of India's most wanted terrorists responsible for several bombings that have claimed over 140 lives, has been arrested.

The 30-year-old, whose real name is Ahmed Siddibappa, was picked up from Pokhara in Nepal where he was living in the guise of a Unani doctor. The successful operation of the Intelligence Bureau, which was facilitated by Nepal, also yielded a bonus in the form of Asadullah Akhtar alias Haddi, an absconding front-ranking member of the Azamgarh module of the Indian Mujahideen (IM) who had played a crucial role in the 2011 serial blasts in Mumbai.

With the police of different states on his trail, Yasin had made Nepal his base. He would come to India only for plotting and perpetrating terror attacks. The vast network of associates he had created in the nearby Darbhanga district helped him stay away from India and yet operate efficiently. In the event, it was the success of IB in tracking one of his assets which led to the high-ranking fugitive.

The arrest of Yasin, who carried a reward of Rs 10 lakh, is a major breakthrough for the Indian security establishment's efforts to neutralize IM which overcame setbacks inflicted by security agencies to resume its terror campaign against India.

Yasin, who came from the same town Bhatkal in coastal Karnataka as two fugitive commanders of IM Riyaz and Iqbal, was at the forefront of the effort to revive the terror outfit, and would often go to the extent of personally participating in terror attacks such as in Pune's German Bakery and Bangalore's Chinnaswamy Stadium in 2010, Mumbai serial blasts in 2011, Pune's Jangali Maharaj Road blast in 2012 and twin blasts in Hyderabad's Dilsukhnagar in 2013.

Besides being good at making improvised explosive devices (IEDs), Yasin also radicalized and recruited several youth, particularly from Bihar's Darbhanga region.

A proxy of Lashkar-e-Taiba, which was launched at the instance of Pakistan's spy agency ISI, the IM has been blamed by Indian security agencies for deadly blasts in Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Pune and Jaipur. The attacks attributed to the IM have so far claimed 222 lives, and maimed several hundreds more. This is more than the lives lost in the 26/11 attack.

Significantly, the huge toll does not include the 209 who perished in the Mumbai train attack of 2006: a carnage which is now suspected to have been executed by the IM.

"This is the biggest success (against IM) after the Mumbai crackdown and Batla House operation (of September 2008), after which IM was forced to slow down its activities," an intelligence officer summed up the significance of the catch in the wee hours of Thursday from Nepal. He said that besides planting bombs himself, Yasin would also carry explosives to members of IM modules. Saif, an IM operative who is in jail, has told interrogators that Dr Shahrukh—an alias used by the Yasin—had provided explosives for the 2008 serial blasts in Ahmedabad.

"Yasin Bhatkal has been traced and detained last night at the Indo-Nepal border in Bihar. He is presently in custody of Bihar police. His interrogation is going on," home minister Sushilkumar Shinde said in the Capital, even as preparations were underway to fly Yasin to Delhi on Friday after a court in Bihar's Motihari district granted his transit remand to NIA.

The agencies caught up with Yasin on the basis of a tip-off from Darbhanga district in Bihar: a region the IM terrorist has been linked to since he radicalized a Muslim youth from the area while reportedly pursuing an engineering course in Bhatkal. He frequented the district, and played a major role in raising what intelligence agencies call the IM's Darbhanga module. Though a late addition to the IM's units, the Darbhanga module soon gained in importance, with its members like Qateel Siddiqui, Mohammad Adil and Gayur Jamali participating in terror attacks across the country.

Yasin, who had escaped identification when caught by Kolkata police for carrying counterfeit currency in 2009, did not try to fake his identity when a joint team of IB and Bihar police confronted him in the early hours of Thursday. "He betrayed little emotion when our officials identified him from the three scars on his face and told him his game was up," said a senior police officer involved in the operation.

Yasin guided the cops to Asadullah 'Haddi'. Son of an influential doctor from UP who played a key role in rallying clerics against the Batla House encounter and arrests of terror suspects, Haddi was living in the guise of Daniyal.

Coming on the heels of the arrest of Abdul Karim Tunda, who orchestrated a series of blasts across Delhi and elsewhere in the 90s, the arrest was also reflective of the Indian security establishment's growing cooperation with Nepal whose approach facilitated the hijack of Indian Airlines aircraft, IC- 814, in 1999.