Chennai: A year after the Tamil Nadu police busted one of the biggest terror modules in the state, the mastermind of the jihadi group and a notorious terror suspect who has been evading the police for 20 years now, remains at large. The trail seems to have gone cold. At least two dozen policemen, including a few senior officers, have been on the job of tracking down Aboobakar Siddique but have not even got a clear sketch of the absconding jihadi.
On October 5, 2013, the Tamil Nadu police nabbed three of the four most wanted terror suspects in a special operation in Chennai and Puttur (Andhra Pradesh). With the help of the AP commandos, the team had completed the operation by flushing out two of the suspects – Panna Ismail, 39, and Bilal Malik, 26. The police had nabbed ‘Police’ Fakruddin, 36, from Vepery in Chennai a day earlier.
However, the police, during that pre-dawn raid in Puttur, missed Siddique, who had been staying with the trio for a few days. They only got hold of the bombs he had made. Police officials say Siddique is a master of disguise. “He keeps changing his places of stay at regular intervals. He also changes the way he looks. We tried giving a face to him using computer-generated images, but that was not useful because we came to know about his disguising skills. But, we hope to nab him one day,” said a senior officer of the special investigation division.
The Afghan-trained bomb-maker had so far managed to stay aloof despite the fact that the entire intelligence machinery is combing through their ‘contacts’ across the country and even overseas. The agencies intensified their search for the most wanted man who has a Ph.D. in English literature after Siddique’s associate ‘Police’ Fakruddin’s disclosure that the jihadists got their murderous inspiration, weapons and identity of targets from him.
The SID, during in the last one year, has chargesheeted all in the six murders committed by jihad group, headed by Siddique. The gang was allegedly involved in five saffron killing and one murder for gain. Inspector S. Lakshmanan of special division, part of the operation, was injured when the suspects attacked him. Lakshmanan, a DSP now, was in hospital for 40 days. “I am back on duty and attending to my normal work,” Lakshmanan said without elaborating when this newspaper contacted him on Monday.
