The Tamil Nadu police on Thursday, July 10, arrested one of the most-wanted suspects in the 1998 Coimbatore serial bomb blasts case. Sadiq alias Raja alias Tailor Raja, who had been evading arrest for 29 years, was traced to Vijayapura district in northern Karnataka, where he had been living under a false identity.
Raja, a 50-year-old, originally from Ukkadam in Coimbatore, was arrested by a special team of the Coimbatore city police and the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) based on specific intelligence inputs. He was found living as Shahjahan Shaik, a chilli commission agent in Vijayapura, where he had managed to stay over ten years.
Raja, a frontline cadre of the banned organisation Al-Umma, is said to have played a key role in the 1998 Coimbatore blasts, which killed 58 people and left over 250 injured. The bombings carried out were allegedly aimed at assassinating senior BJP leader LK Advani, who was scheduled to attend a rally in the city.
Raja had rented a house in Vallal Nagar, Ukkadam, where the bombs used in the attack were allegedly manufactured and stored. He is also believed to have distributed the explosives to other Al-Umma members days before the attack. After the blasts, Raja fled to Hubballi in Karnataka and continued to evade arrest by moving between Solapur, Guntur, and Vijayapura.
Raja also faces multiple other serious charges. In 1996, he was allegedly involved in the petrol bomb attack inside Coimbatore Central Prison, in which jail warden Boopalan was killed. The attack was reportedly carried out as retaliation for the alleged ill-treatment of Muslim prisoners.
He has been remanded in judicial custody till July 24 and lodged at Coimbatore Central Prison. The ATS is expected to seek his custody for further interrogation.
The arrest of Tailor Raja comes after another significant breakthrough. The Tamil Nadu police on last week arrested two long-time absconding terror suspects from Annamayya district in Andhra Pradesh.
Abubacker Siddique, a native of Nagore, and Mohammed Ali alias Yunus alias Mansoor from Melapalayam, Tirunelveli, were apprehended for their alleged involvement in multiple bomb blasts and communal killings across Tamil Nadu and neighbouring states.
Siddique had been on the run since 1995 and is a key accused in several terror-related cases, including the 1995 Hindu Munnani office blast in Chennai Chintadripet, a bomb explosion in Nagore, the coordinated bomb planting in 1999 across Chennai, Trichy, Coimbatore, and parts of Kerala, 2011 pipe bomb planting attempt targeting L.K. Advani’s Rath Yatra in Madurai, 2012 murder of Dr. Arvind Reddy in Vellore and the 2013 bomb blast near the BJP office in Malleswaram, Bengaluru.
Mohammed Ali, absconding since 1999, is also linked to the 1999 coordinated bomb planting incident. Both were produced before a judicial magistrate and remanded to custody.
Speaking to the media on Friday, July 11, Tamil Nadu Director General of Police (DGP) Shankar Jiwal said that there were two operations conducted in connection with the case as “Operation Aram” and “Operation Agali” respectively.
He said, “In the future, Tamil Nadu will be free from any activities which relate to terrorism or serious criminal repercussions. That will be assured of.”
Preliminary investigation revealed that the trio were involved in various businesses including textiles, groceries and real estate to make a living there, the DGP added.
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin, in a social media post, hailed the efforts of the ATS, which was set up in 2023, and thanked the Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh police for their cooperation in assisting the operation.