The man accused of waging a number of bombing campaigns in India, including the 2006 Mumbai train blasts that killed 209 people and injured more than 700, has been captured after a shootout with police in Delhi.
Abdul Subhan Qureshi had been India’s most wanted man for a decade, and was sometimes referred to as “India’s Bin Laden”. He was captured in the Ghazipur district of the capital during security preparations for Friday’s Republic Day celebrations.
As well as his alleged involvement in the Mumbai bombings he was wanted in connection with a series of blasts in the western state of Gujarat in 2008, in which 56 people were killed, and bomb attacks in Delhi in 2010 and Bangalore in 2014.
Qureshi is accused of being a commander of the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), which later helped to create the Indian Mujahidin terrorist group with the help of al-Qaeda, and other radical Islamic groups. He is said to have used various aliases, including Kasim, Zakir, Qab and Tauqeer.
Pramod Kushwaha, deputy commissioner of Delhi police’s counterterrorism unit, said: “We have found pistols and documents on Qureshi; he was trying to revive the SIMI and the Indian Mujahidin.” He said that there was evidence that Qureshi had lived in Nepal for years using fake documents and that he was in Saudi Arabia between 2013 and 2015 before returning to India.
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Police said that officers and intelligence agents followed Qureshi, 46, and detained him after the brief shootout. He was taken to court immediately and placed on remand for 14 days.
The bomb blasts in Mumbai in 2006 targeted a rail network used by about 7.5 million people a day. Explosives were placed in pressure cookers on seven trains during the morning rush.
The 2008 blasts in Ahmedabad and Surat, Gujarat, involved about 20 bombs placed in lunch boxes and on motorcycles in markets, bus stations and hospitals where the injured were being treated.
Qureshi, a father of three, evaded police many times over the years. It is alleged that he became radicalised in 2001 when he left his job as a computer engineer to pursue religious activities. He went on to edit Islamic Voice, a mouthpiece of SIMI. His former schoolteachers in Mumbai were said to have been stunned by his turn to terrorism, remembering him as a studious, quiet and clever student.
Qureshi’s name cropped up for the first time in the list of wanted terrorists when Indian Mujahidin operatives sent out emails claiming responsibility for a series of blasts in Uttar Pradesh, Jaipur, Ahmedabad and Delhi between 2007 and 2008. Counterterrorism agencies believed that the emails were sent by Qureshi.