COIMBATORE: Nearly 27 years after the 1998 Coimbatore serial bomb blast, which claimed 58 lives and injured 250 people, the Coimbatore city police and the Coimbatore unit of the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) on Wednesday arrested one of the key accused in the case in Karnataka. The suspect, ‘Tailor’ Raja (48), has been on the run since 1996 after he was booked in a petrol bomb attack case against a jail warden in Coimbatore.
Raja, who was from Bilal Estate at Ukkadam in Coimbatore, has multiple aliases, including Sadiq, Valarntha Raja, Shahjahan Abdul Majid Makandar, and Shahjahan Shaik. He was arrested from Vijayapura (formerly known as Bijapur) district in North Karnataka on Wednesday by a joint team of ATS and city police personnel based on a tip-off, sources said.
The investigation to trace Raja, one of the four suspects declared as wanted by the CB-CID police in the case, was taken over by the ATS after its formation in 2023. The team brought Raja to Coimbatore on Thursday and after inquiry at the Police Recruit School (PRS), he was produced before Fifth Judicial Magistrate Court and sent to judicial remand till July 24, sources said.
Coimbatore bomb blast case arrest: Stalin lauds TN police
According to police, ‘Tailor’ Raja is allegedly involved in 1998 Coimbatore bomb blast, 1996 petrol bomb attack in Coimbatore which resulted in the death of jail warden Boopalan, Sayeetha murder case in Nagore in 1996, and murder of jailor Jayaprakash in Madurai in 1997. He was a frontline cadre of Al-Umma, a banned outfit founded by SA Basha, the prime accused in the blast case.
A tailor and embroidery expert, Raja allegedly rented a house at Vallal Nagar in Ukkadam, where the bombs were stored for the serial blast, and orchestrated to kill BJP leader LK Advani who had come to Coimbatore to attend an election meeting, sources said.
Raja, who managed to evade police surveillance, settled in Vijayapura, where he married a woman and now has two children. He was working as a load man in a local vegetable market and identified himself as Shajahan. He had recently met his old friends from Coimbatore, who were under police radar and technical tracking systems, enabling the police to locate him. He would be taken into custody for further investigation, sources said.
Recently, the ATS, in coordination with the Coimbatore city police, had arrested wanted accused Abu Bakr Siddique and Mohamed Ali, alias Yunus from Annamayya district in Andhra Pradesh. The arrest of ‘Tailor’ Raja marks the third successful apprehension of a long-absconding accused involved in terror cases. Two more suspects, Mujibur Rehman alias Muji and Yusuf, involved in Coimbatore serial blast case, are at large since February 1998, said sources.
Meanwhile, CM M K Stalin lauded the Tamil Nadu police on the arrest. Taking to X, Stalin said the team recently arrested three key terrorists, including Abu Bakr Siddique, who was absconding for 30 years. “My heartfelt congratulations to ATS and the Intelligence Branch officers, who once again established that TN police is at the forefront of internal security in our country. Our gratitude also goes to the Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh state police,” he said.