City police arrest prime suspect in Malleswaram blast

The Central Crime Branch (CCB) sleuths have arrested the prime suspect in the 2013 bomb blast near the BJP office in Malleswaram.

The suspect Mohammad Ali Khan alias Kutty (45), is the founding member of the banned outfit Al Ummah. Khan was picked up from Sathyamangalam in Erode district, Tamil Nadu, on August 15. He was arrested subsequently, said the police.

“Khan is the prime conspirator of the blast that occurred at 10.30 am on April 17, 2013. Eighteen persons were injured, while 23 vehicles and 56 houses in the locality were damaged in the blast. Khan provided logistics and guided transportaion of explosives. He was absconding in Tamil Nadu for the last three years,” a senior CCB officer told DH.

The CCB police had arrested Daniel Prakash (35), vice president of Pudukudi village panchayat in Tirunelveli district, from Tirunelveli town in the first week of June this year in connection with the blast. During the interrogation, he provided leads about Khan’s whereabouts. The CCB’s special team monitored Khan’s movements in Erode district before detaining him, the officer added.

Khan is involved in four blasts in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. He had provided explosives for serial blasts in Coimbatore in 1998 at a rally attended by the then deputy prime minister L K Advani. More than 50 persons were killed in the blasts.

The local police arrested him and had filed a charge-sheet. The court had awarded him life imprisonment. After serving 12-year prison sentence, he came out of the jail in 2010 and plotted the blast in Malleshwaram, said the police.

Khan was one of the prime suspects in a blast at G-1 police station in Chennai in 1998. He was a key conspirator in an explosion near film director Mani Ratnam’s residence in 1998. He provided logistics for an explosion in 1998 near a bus stand in Coimbatore in which 9 persons were killed.

He guided transportation of explosives for the blasts in trains leaving from Chennai for Erode, Tiruchirappalli in Tamil Nadu. And also to Thrissur, where eleven persons were killed in the blasts in 1998, said the police.

The CCB police have arrested Paravai Basha, Daniel Prakash, Jahan Aseer and Syed Ali, since March this year. The number of persons arrested, so far, in the case had gone up to 17.

Of the 20 suspects in the case, three are still at large. The CCB sleuths were searching for them. The CCB sleuths had filed a 7,745-page charge-sheet in October 2013.