Daniel George
Bengaluru
In a significant breakthrough, the Coimbatore City Police and Tamil Nadu’s Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) on Wednesday afternoon arrested a long-absconding suspect in the 1998 Coimbatore serial bomb blasts case from Vijayapura in Karnataka. The suspect, identified as Sadiq alias Raja alias Tailor Raja alias Valarntha Raja (48), was nabbed from the agricultural market or 'mandi' where he had been working as a chilly trader for several years under a false identity.
Traders at the mandi were stunned when plainclothes officers picked up Raja, unaware of his terror links. According to top Tamil Nadu police officials, Raja was one of four suspects declared wanted by the CB-CID in connection with the Coimbatore blasts, which claimed 58 lives and injured over 250 people.
Raja, a tailor by profession, was a frontline cadre of Al-Umma, a now-banned extremist organization founded by the prime accused in the blasts, SA Basha. He had allegedly played a crucial role in preparing and storing the explosives at a rented house in Vallal Nagar, Ukkadam, and Coimbatore. The bombs were strategically placed across the city using vehicles, push carts, abandoned containers, and tea cans, timed to explode during BJP leader LK Advani’s visit for an election rally.
“We had been focusing on sleeper cell operatives who had vanished decades ago. After the recent arrest of top terror operative Abubacker Siddique, we uncovered leads about fugitives hiding in Karnataka, which led us to Raja,” a senior Tamil Nadu police officer told CH on Thursday.
Raja’s arrest follows the recent captures of two other key accused—Abubacker Siddique and Mohamed Ali alias Yunus—from Annamayya district in Andhra Pradesh. All three had been evading arrest for over two decades.
The 1998 serial blasts led to a statewide crackdown on extremist elements and the eventual banning of Al-Umma by the Tamil Nadu government. With Raja’s arrest, authorities hope to gain more insight into long-dormant terror networks and sleeper cells still operating in the region.
