NEW DELHI: Indian police have arrested the alleged co-founder of the terror group Indian Mujahideen, Yasin Bhatkal, last night near the border with Nepal, Indian Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde said on Thursday.
The 30-year-old Bhatkal is suspected of killing hundreds of people in multiple terror attacks across India.
Talking to media in New Delhi, Shinde said that Bhatkal is in police custody in the northern state of Bihar. “He is being interrogated,” he said. “I cannot disclose which intelligence agencies were involved.”
Bhatkal has masterminded and helped execute some of the worst terror attacks in India in recent years, Intelligence officials said.
In February this year, 16 people were killed and 80 injured when two bombs ripped through a crowded market in the heart of Hyderabad.
Intelligence officials said that security camera footage establishes that Bhatkal planted a bag with a bomb at the German Bakery in Pune in February 2010. In that attack, 17 people were killed and nearly 60 injured.
Two months later, two bombs exploded inside a Bangalore stadium, packed for a cricket match which was to start an hour later. Fifteen people were injured. A third bomb was defused outside the stadium. Bhatkal is the main accused.
The next year, Bhatkal allegedly planned the trio of rush-hour bomb blasts in Mumbai in July 2011 in which 27 people were killed and 130 injured.
The Mujahideen is accused of planting five bombs in Delhi that exploded within minutes of each other in September 2008. At least 30 people were killed and more than 100 injured.
