On August 16, 2008, less than a month after serial blasts had rocked Ahmedabad city on July 26, the then state director general of police, P C Pande, had declared he would solve the case with the arrest of Mufti Abu Bashar from Azamgarh in Uttar Pradesh and others.

Nevertheless, almost a year after that and the arrest of 57 people alleged to be part of the terror module, the masterminds of the blasts — Abdul Subhan alias Tauqeer and Amir Raza Khan, and key conspirator Riyaz Bhatkal, still elude Gujarat Police.

The Gujarat Police had attributed the entire blasts conspiracy in Ahmedabad and Surat to the terror outfit Indian Mujahideen (IM), which, the police say, is another wing of the banned terror outfits, Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) and Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HuJI). According to the investigators, IM had allegedly carried out the blasts under the direction, guidance and assistance of HuJI operative Amir Raza Khan from Pakistan. According to the Ahmedabad police, 40 conspirators in the case are still at large.

After the detection of the case, Gujarat Police had taken custody of senior SIMI leaders like Safdar Nagori and Abdul Sibli from a Madhya Pradesh jail. Many other accused have been taken into custody from different jails of the country.

However, key-conspirators like Amir Raza Khan (now believed to be in Karachi), Riyaz Bhatkal, Iqbal Bhatkal and Tauqeer continue to elude the police.

The Bhatkal brothers belong to Karnataka while Tauqeer comes from Thane in Maharashtra.

... contd.