Terrorist behind 2011 LK Advani Madurai pipe-bomb plot held after 30 years on run

Tamil Nadu’s Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) arrested terrorist Abubacker Siddique, wanted in the 2011 pipe-bomb planting attempt during former Deputy Prime Minister LK Advani’s rath yatra in Madurai.

Siddique was traced to his hideout in Andhra Pradesh’s Annamayya district after being on the run for 30 years, the police said on Tuesday.

Siddique, a native of Tamil Nadu’s Nagore, was involved in multiple bomb blasts and communal murders across south India, according to the police.

A reward of Rs 5 lakh had been announced for information leading to his arrest. Along with him, another fugitive, Mohammed Ali, also known as Yunus or Mansoor, from Tirunelveli, was also arrested. Ali had been absconding for 26 years.

“They were involved in several bomb blasts and communal murders and had evaded arrest for three decades,” the police said in a statement. The arrests were made following a tip-off, with support from central intelligence agencies that had been tracking them for years.

Siddique is an accused in several high-profile terror cases including the 1995 bomb blast at the Hindu Munnani office in Chennai, a parcel bomb explosion the same year in Nagore that killed Hindu right-wing activist T Muthukrishnan, and the 1999 coordinated bomb planting at the Chennai Police Commissioner’s office, Egmore, and six other locations including Tiruchirappalli, Coimbatore and parts of Kerala.

He is also a suspect in the 2012 murder of Dr Arvind Reddy in Vellore and the 2013 bomb blast near the BJP office in Malleswaram, Bengaluru.

His associate Mohammed Ali was wanted in connection with the 1999 bomb-planting incidents in Tamil Nadu and Kerala.

Both will be produced before a judicial magistrate and remanded, police said.

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