MUMBAI: A key accused in the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts, Yakub Khan alias Yeda Yakub, is believed to have died in Karachi in Pakistan, as per information received by police here.
"On Wednesday, police got the information about Yeda Yakub's death through informers," Mumbai Police Commissioner Rakesh Maria said today. According to police sources, he died after suffering a major heart attack. Yeda Yakub and his brother Majid Khan had played a key role in the conspiracy of the 1993 serial bomb blasts that left 257 dead and over 700 injured. The duo was instrumental in transportation of RDX from Raigad to Mumbai, police said.
Soon after the blasts, he had fled to Dubai and from there to Karachi allegedly with the help of Pakistan's intelligence agency ISI, said the investigators of the 1993 blasts. However, Majid remained in city doing construction business.
Majid was gunned down in suburban Bandra in 2000 by rival Chhota Rajan gang members, police said. For past several years, Yeda was staying in Karachi with his second wife and children, they said, adding that he was looking after the recruitment network of underworld don Dawood Ibrahim's gang in Mumbai and UP.
He was also looking after the terror-funding activities of Dawood and international drug baron Iqbal Mirchi who died in 2013, police added. A dozen coordinated RDX-laden bombs had rocked Mumbai on March 12, 1993, leaving 257 people dead and over 700 injured. Gangsters Dawood Ibrahim and Tiger Memon, the elder brother of Yakub Memon who was last month hanged after conviction in the blasts case, are said to be in Pakistan and have been named as prime conspirators for the terror attack.