Chennai: Thirty months after the twin blasts at Chennai Central, the case may have been solved after all. Among the eight SIMI ultras who broke out of the Bhopal Central Prison and were soon gunned down were the two suspects who may have kept the bomb on the train which went off while it had stopped at the Central station. The bomb blasts on May 1, 2014, in the two coaches of the Bengaluru - Guwahati express, killed software professional employed in TCS, Swathi (22) and 14 others were injured.
Since Aijajudeen, who was the third suspect in the bombing had already been killed in an encounter by the Telangana police in April 2015, CB-CID sleuths, acting as per the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), will intimate the trial court about the death of all the suspects. The charges will be abated and the case will be closed.
The accused in the crime were Zakir Hussain (33), Sheik Mehaboob (26) and Aijajudeen. This newspaper had in February 2016 broken the story of how CB-CID officials had named the three suspects involved in the Chennai Central blasts. An official disclosure came much later from the same officials by way of an affidavit filed before the Madras High Court in a case demanding that the probe be shifted to NIA. The bench, comprising the Chief Justice S.K. Kaul, and Justice R. Mahadevan, dismissed the petition after it was convinced of the progress made by CB-CID, which it had placed on record before the Court.
Hussain and Mehaboob were arrested on February 2 in Rourkela, Odisha and were facing a murder charge in Madhya Pradesh. The duo had confessed to the CB-CID officials that it was they, along with Aijajudeen, who had planted the bombs in Bengaluru railway station on the day of the incident. They revealed that their targets were Assam people who travelled home in large numbers by that tri-weekly express train. Had the blast occurred when the train was running, the number of casualties may have been much higher, considering the train would have been nearer Tada as per schedule if not for delays.
