Missing serial blasts convict arrested at Kanpur mosque

Dr Jalees Ansari

The Uttar Pradesh ATS on Friday arrested 1993 Ajmer serial blasts accused Dr Jalees Ansari aka Dr Bomb while he was walking out of a mosque in Kanpur after Friday prayers. According to the UP police, he was planning to escape to Nepal through the Uttar Pradesh border. And, in order to hoodwink the police, he was holding the hand of a child playing in the locality.

Following his arrest in Uttar Pradesh, the Maharashtra ATS claimed he was detained by them with the help of the UP Special Task Force (STF). However, the Uttar Pradesh DGP OP Singh told mid-day it was the sole operation of the UP STF.

According to the UP police, on Thursday, they received information from the Mumbai Police about Ansari going missing on the last day of his parole. "After receiving information that he was travelling towards Uttar Pradesh, we activated the entire force and his photographs were shared with all police stations across the state. It was UP STF Deputy Superintendent of Police Pramesh Kumar Shukla who received information about Ansari's presence in Kanpur. The STF team was deployed at the location, where he was arrested and taken to Lucknow for further interrogation. He will be thoroughly interrogated to understand why he had come to UP," OP Singh told mid-day.

Tried to fool cops
The STF officer present near the mosque had identified him with the help of a photograph but as he was walking with a child he thought that he may be a local resident. "To confirm his identity, the officer in civil dress called out to him, 'Ansari cha-cha kaise ho, jail me hum saath the, pehchane ki nahi'. Ansari looked scared by this, and the officer immediately got hold of him," a senior officer from the UP Police told mid-day.

Ansari, who jumped parole a day before he was supposed to surrender, left his Agripada residence on Thursday morning and reached Byculla station. From there he went to CSMT and boarded an Uttar Pradesh-bound train and got down at Kanpur station." The local network gave his exact location and accordingly a team was dispatched there," said DySP Shukla.

The Uttar Pradesh Police in its official press release said they suspected Ansari had planned to flee to Nepal. They recovered a cellphone and R47,000 in cash from him.

Ansari, a MBBS doctor whose role has surfaced in more than 50 blasts across the country after the Babri demolition in 1992, has been convicted in several blast cases and sentenced to life imprisonment in the blast on the Delhi Ajmer Rajdhani train.

He was also sentenced in Mumbai for placing a bomb in Gamdevi police station and under a jeep parked outside Agripada police station.

He was an active member of banned terror outfits like SIMI, Harkat-UL-Jihadi and Indian Mujahideen.

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