Coimbatore blast accused arrested in Karnataka after 29 years on the run

Chennai: The Tamil Nadu police on Thursday said it has arrested Sadiq Raja alias Tailor Raja, who has been in hiding for the last 29 years, from Vijayapura district in Karnataka for his alleged involvement in various terror-related incidents, including the deadly 1998 Coimbatore blasts. 

The 50-year-old is a native of Coimbatore and has been absconding since 1996. He was involved in the Coimbatore blasts, whose target was senior BJP leader L K Advani, that killed 58 people and injured 250 others and in the 1996 petrol bomb attack in Coimbatore prison that killed the jail warden. 

Acting on specific and credible intelligence, a special team of Anti-Terrorism Squad and Coimbatore city police arrested Tailor Raja from Vijayapura district and brought him to Coimbatore, where he was produced before a local court. 

“Besides terror incidents, Tailor Raja is also named as an accused in the 1996 Sayeetha murder case in Nagore and the 1997 murder of Jailor Jayaprakash in Madurai,” a senior police officer said. 

The arrest comes just a week after police arrested a terror suspect, who was allegedly involved in the blast outside the Karnataka BJP office in Bengaluru’s Malleswaram and other blasts in the state, from Annamaya district in Andhra Pradesh. 

Nagoor Abubhacker Siddiq, who is also a suspect in planting a bomb on the route of senior BJP leader Advani’s yatra in Madurai in 2011, was taken into custody along with his aide Tirunelveli Mohammed Ali by a special team of the Tamil Nadu police which went to Andhra Pradesh acting on a tip-off. 

Chief Minister M K Stalin took to X to appreciate the efforts of the Anti-Terrorism Squad established in 2023 in nabbing Tailor Raja from his hideout in Karnataka.

He also thanked the police in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh for their co-operation extended to Tamil Nadu police.