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Police seek accuracy of ‘killing’ of bomb suspect

MUMBAI - Top police and intelligence officials here are trying to ferret out information about the suspected killing in Karachi of Riyaz Bhatkal, the founder of Indian Mujahideen (IM), and one of the most wanted terrorists in the country.

A person claiming to be underworld don Chhota Rajan called up a local television news channel here about two days ago, informing it that he had got Riyaz and an aide killed in Karachi. The don, suspected to be living somewhere in South East Asia, is known to call up television channels after killing a rival.

Senior police officials here said on Thursday that they are pursuing the matter through intelligence and other networks, besides official Indian government channels, to confirm the news.

Riyaz and his elder brother Iqbal are originally from the coastal Karnataka town of Bhatkal. They got radicalised a few years ago and set up the IM, especially after the government banned the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). Later, they allegedly masterminded terror attacks in several cities with the help of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistan-based outfit, including Jaipur, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, New Delhi and Pune.

The Bhatkal brothers (their family name is Shahbandari) are alleged to have ordered the blasts at the German Bakery in Pune last year. They are said to control several ‘sleeper cells’ of the IM, present throughout the country. Riyaz (who also uses aliases such as Roshan Khan, Aziz, Ahmed, Dilawar and Shahrukh), a civil engineer, escaped to Pakistan in 2008 after the bomb blasts in a few cities, the Indian government claims.

India has urged the Pakistan government to extradite the Bhatkal brothers, but the latter deny they are being harboured in the country.

However, the caller claiming to be Chhota Rajan told the news channel that Riyaz and an aide, Nissar Anwar, were shot at by his (Rajan’s) hired assassin, as they were driving near Karina market in Gulshan-e-Iqbal area in Karachi on January 5. Both later succumbed to their injuries in a near-by hospital, he added.

A few years ago, another Indian militant, Abdul Shahid Bilal (a key commander of the Harkat-ul-Jihad-Al-Islami (HuJI), was also suspected to have been gunned down in Karachi. The Hyderabad youth, alleged to have masterminded terror attacks in the south Indian city, escaped from India after the blasts. But that mystery remains unresolved even today.

nithin@khaleejtimes.com