PATNA: Mehre Alam, one of the accused in the 2013 Gandhi Maidan blast case was arrested by the Special Task Force (STF) of the Bihar Police from Darbhanga after he was on the run for 10 years.
Serial blasts had rocked the Gandhi Maidan on October 29, 2013, during the 'Hunkar Rally' of then BJP PM candidate and Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi.
Acting on a tip-off, an STF team conducted a raid at Singhauli village under the jurisdiction of Ashok Paper Mill police station in Darbhanga district and took Mehre Alam into custody late on Saturday.
He was evading arrest ever since he had escaped from the custody of the NIA on October 29, 2013, two days after the serial blasts.
Station house officer (SHO) of AP Mill police station Shiv Kumar Yadav confirmed the arrest of Mehre from Singhauli village. “We cooperated with the visiting police team, which left with Mehre for its destination after completing legal formalities at the police station,” he told this reporter over phone.
According to police sources, Mehre was a close associate of Monu, a resident of Samastipur district, who was convicted in the serial blast case along with eight others by an NIA court in Patna. He had come in contact with Monu while studying at Polytechnic College at Darbhanga.
The serial blasts had left at least six persons dead and 82 others wounded.
Mehre told the investigators that he had met Monu in a library at Darbhanga where the latter was a frequent visitor.
The NIA had filed a chargesheet against 11 persons on August 21, 2014.
In November 2021, the NIA court in Patna held nine persons guilty of the crime.
Haider Ali, Noman Ansari, Md. Mojibullah Ansari and Imtiyaz Alam were awarded capital punishment. Azhar Qureshi and Azharuddin were among three others who were awarded life sentences while Ahmad Hussain and Firoz Alam received 10 years of imprisonment. One of them received a seven-year jail term.
Meanwhile, Mehre's father Mahmood Alam refuted that his son was in hiding. “He was made a witness in the case being probed by the NIA. He was not evading arrest as reported by a section of media,” he told this reporter on Sunday.