Chennai, 10 July (H.S.): Tailor Raja, a key accused in the 1998 Coimbatore bomb blast case, has been remanded to judicial custody till July 24. Raja, also known as Sadiq, was arrested by a special team from the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) and Coimbatore City Police in the Vijayapura district of Karnataka. He had been absconding for nearly 29 years, evading law enforcement agencies since 1996.
The accused is believed to be involved in several terror cases and communal murder cases, including the 1998 Coimbatore bomb blasts that claimed 58 lives and injured 250 persons. Other notable cases linked to Raja include the 1996 petrol bomb attack in Coimbatore that resulted in the death of Jail Warden Boopalan, the 1996 Sayeetha murder case in Nagore, and the 1997 murder of Jailor Jayaprakash in Madurai.
This arrest marks the third successful apprehension of a long-absconding accused involved in terror-related cases. Recently, the Anti-Terrorism Squad, in coordination with the Coimbatore City Police, arrested Abubacker Siddique and Mohamed Ali alias Yunus from Annamayya District in Andhra Pradesh. With Raja now in custody, investigators hope to uncover further leads on dormant networks and sleeper cells of Al Ummah that once operated in Tamil Nadu.
The 1998 Coimbatore bomb blasts were a series of coordinated attacks that rocked the city, targeting a rally addressed by senior BJP leader L.K. Advani. The incident led to the banning of the Ummah organisation, whose founder, Basha, was a mastermind behind the blasts. The Madras High Court later upheld the trial court's verdict, pronouncing 69 people guilty of various offenses related to the case.
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Hindusthan Samachar / Dr. R. B. Chaudhary
