Police offer Rs 5 lakh reward for Vikaruddin

Since December 2008,a manhunt has been launched by the Special Investigation Team (SIT) but Vikaruddin remains elusive. He keeps surfacing in the city with impunity to launch attacks on the police and rattle the city for a few hours.

After Friday’s firing at a police picket near Shah Ali Banda which killed Constable U Ramesh Kumar,Hyderabad Police launched a massive inter-state manhunt again,but have not been able to achieve any breakthrough. The police have now announced a reward of Rs 5 lakh for any information on him. The attack is suspected to be in retaliation of the Mecca Masjid blast whose third anniversary is on May 18,and police suspect that Vikaruddin is once again behind the attack.

Police Commissioner A K Khan said evidence available at the crime scene indicated that a fringe fundamentalist organisation calling itself Tehreek Galba E Islam that has ties with the DJS was responsible for the attack. The same organisation claimed responsibility for killing a Home Guard in Falaknuma limits last year on May 18 as well in a similar attack. The police have registered a case and the investigation has been handed over to the SIT,which is also investigating the two previous cases. However,there are no clues yet. “He is turning out to be a big challenge for us. We strongly suspect that he is involved in Friday’s incident as well as that of last year,” a SIT official said.

Vikaruddin is learnt to have joined the terror network in 2000 after his stint with the DJS. The DJS claims to be a social organisation that works for the “welfare and prosperity of Muslims,training youths in self-defence,and paving the way for Islamic supremacy”.

It was here that Vikaruddin was ‘sensitised’ about the alleged persecution of Muslims,the Israel-Palestine conflict and US occupation and its alleged atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan,according to a police officer. Hyderabad Police were on the look out for Vikaruddin to investigate his alleged links with SIMI and terror networks.

On December 3,2008,police received a tip-off that he and two accomplices were making phone calls from a booth in Santoshinagar. Three counter-intelligence officials went to check,but Vikaruddin spotted them first and opened fire,injuring one of them and escaped. The police recovered spent cartridges of 7.65 mm calibre bullets from the scene. Since then two attacks have occurred on police pickets and in both incidents police suspect Vikaruddin’s involvement because the same weapon appears to have been used and same calibre bullet cartridges have been found in the firing incident on Friday as well as that on May 18 last year.