The Tamil Nadu Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) arrested the state’s most wanted terrorist, Abubacker Siddique, along with another wanted terrorist, Mohammed Ali (alias Yunus or Mansoor), from a remote hideout in Andhra Pradesh recently.
Siddique, a native of Nagore, has been on the run for nearly three decades. The terrorists have been living under fake identities in Rayachoti, Andhra Pradesh.
According to police, Siddique, who is a skilled bomb-maker and radical ideologue, has been absconding since 1995. He carried a reward of ₹5 lakh. He was involved in the 2011 pipe-bomb planting attempt on L K Advani’s Rath Yatra in Madurai.
He was involved in several deadly terrorist attacks, including the 1995 bombing at the Hindu Munnani office in Chintadripet, Chennai and a bomb blast in Nagore in the same year.
He was also responsible for coordinating bomb-planting operations at 7 locations in Chennai, Trichy, Coimbatore, and parts of Kerala in 1999. Siddique also conspired to target the office of the Chennai Police Commissioner in Egmore.
Police seized several incriminating materials during searches at their residences, including daggers, sickles, digital timers, clock switches, maps of major Indian cities, coding manuals, ISIS-inspired literature, property documents, digital storage devices, cheque books, and financial records linked to suspicious transactions.
Police said that the seized materials were enough to make 50-60 IEDs or 8-10 high-impact suitcase bombs with a lethal radius of 30 metres.
