Indian intelligence agencies have successfully managed to get a key operative of the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, Abdul Karim Tunda, deported from a Gulf country. Tunda was formally arrested by the Delhi police’s special cell which however, maintained that he was arrested from the Banwasa-Mehendarnagar area along the Indo-Nepal border and brought to Delhi.
Seventy-year-old Tunda had been a key field operative of the Lashkar through the ’90s, planning and executing more than 40 bomb explosions all over India. He gradually rose through the ranks in Lashkar, going on to become one of its key members having close links with top terrorists like Hafiz Saeed, Zaki-ur Rehman Lakhvi and Azam Cheema.
But importantly, Tunda had close links with other top terror operatives outside the Lashkar also, like Abdul Aziz, alias Bada Sajid, of the Indian Mujahideen as well as Wadhawa Singh and Ratandeep Singh of the Babbar Khalsa International (BKI). Tunda also acted as a crucial link between terror outfits and underworld don Dawood Ibrahim. Tunda, intelligence sources said, had helped Dawood in his operations in Dubai and India, particularly those linked to the circulation of fake Indian currency.
Intelligence sources also claimed that due to his age, Tunda’s role now was limited to being a prime motivator for new recruits and was one of the main raisers for Lashkar. He was also actively involved in planning operations for the LeT and even trained the new recruits in making of IEDs, an area where he is considered an expert.
Tunda’s expertese lies in making IEDs with locally available materials like urea, nitric acid, potassium chloride, nitrobenzene and sugar, and planting them at crowded places to cause the maximum casualties.
Tunda’s interrogation is likely to yield a lot of inside information in the functioning of Lashkar, its operatives in different countries, particularly its terror modules in India and its links with other outfits like the Indian Mujahideen.
“Tunda’s questioning will give us insight into the working of one of the most dreaded terror outfits which should help our security agencies plan for future offensives. But we need to know how much operational details he would have as these terror outfits are known to be working in watertight compartments,” a senior intelligence official said.
According to S.N. Shrivastava, special commissioner, special cell, Tunda was carrying a Pakistani passport No. AC4413161 issued on January 23, 2013. Lashkar had helped Tunda establish a base in Pilkhua on the outskirts of Delhi in the early ’90s from where he started operating and carried out some of the most lethal bomb attacks across the country.
It was eventually the Delhi police’s crime branch, which, during investigations of the serial blasts of 1997-98, zeroed in on Tunda’s Pilkhua hideout. But by then he had managed to escape to Bangladesh, from where he went on to Pakistan.
Leads on Tunda dried up in the year 2000 following reports that he had died in a bomb explosion. The truth was that he had shifted base from Bangladesh to Pakistan during that time to train and motivate Lashkar cadres.
“Tunda had planned to carry out bombings in and around Delhi in 2010 at the time of the Commonwealth Games, but the plan was timely thwarted with the arrest of his accomplices who were supposed to carry out the attack,” said Mr Shrivastava.
“Karim’s left hand got severed in an accident while he was preparing a bomb, and this later earned him the feared nickname ‘Tunda’, said M.M. Oberoi, joint commissioner, special cell.
Tunda, along with his associates like Dr Jalees Ansari, constituted their own tanzeem, namely Tanzeem Islah-ul-Muslimeen (Islamic Armed Organisation for the Improvement of Muslims). “Another top LeT militant, Azam Ghouri, had joined the tanzeem floated by Ahl-e-Hadis to avenge the Babri Masjid demolition incident,” Mr Oberoi said.
“In Dhaka, Tunda started imparting training to jihadi elements in bomb making. He also stayed in Pakistan, where he is known to have imparted training on fabrication of IEDs and other explosives to mujahids, who are sent to India from Pakistan for jihad,” Mr Oberoi said.
An Interpol red-corner notice was also pending against Tunda. Among the list of top 20 militants given by India to Pakistan, Tunda figured at number 15. Special cell officials claimed that Tunda was returning to India from the Nepal route to carry out more terror strikes in India.