Author:
Publication: The Economic Times
Date: September 30, 2002
Dreaded terrorist Imam Ali, the
mastermind behind serial bomb blasts in Coimbatore and who had plans to
assassinate LK Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and Ashok Singhal, was today
gunned down here along with four of his associates, including a woman,
in a pre-dawn commando operation by a joint team of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka
police.
Police said Ali had been trained
by a Pakistan terror group. 'Imam Ali was trained by Hizbul-Mujahideen
in Jammu and Kashmir in 1991 and also later visited Bangladesh for training,'
senior police official Ashutosh Shukla told newsmen.
It was an ironical quirk of fate
that All fell to bullets during an operation led by Madurai deputy commissioner
of police Shakeel Akhtar, whom he had on his hit list.
Police sources confirmed that Mr
Akhtar faced death threat from the militant. Ali and his four comrades
including a woman, were killed by police in a shoot out early on Sunday.
Ali, leader of fundamentalist Al
Mujahideen group having links with Pakistan's ISI, was traced to a house
in Sanjay Nagar locality where the commandos descended in the early hours
and asked the terrorists to surrender. Ali, however, opened fire on the
policemen who mowed all the five down in a gunbattle that left 13 policemen
wounded.
Ali was an expert in bomb-making
and the Al Mujahideen operated in tandem with Kerala-based Al-Ummah outfit.
Police said Ali had been arrested
in 1995 on charges of involvement in a bomb attack on the regional office
of the RSS in Chennai in 1993. He escaped from custody in March this year
and later formed a group called Al-Mujahideen.
The Al-Mujahideen had planned to
murder a person in Bangalore yesterday and was preparing to set off a chain
of blasts in Tamil Nadu temples, according to intelligence reports gathered
by the police.
Ali carried Rs 5 lakh reward on
his head for masterminding the 1993 bomb blast at RSS' Chennai office.
The police tapped a telephone conversation
between All and members of his gang which revealed the hatching of the
plot. Bangalore police commissioner HT Sangliana said the 'to be' victim
was known to the gang, whose identity was yet to be established by the
police. But the gang abandoned its plans later for reasons known only to
it. The militants had also hatched plans to eliminate TN deputy commissioner
of police (prison), Murthy. Mr Sangliana the gang's earlier attempt on
the life of Mr Murthy had failed.
Following tip off from TN police,
the city police have been tapping the conservation of the gang on their
cell phones. - Agencies
