Saahil Suhail
Early Times Report
Anantnag, July 26: The Gujarat police on Friday arrested one of the accused in the 2002 terror attack on Akshardham temple from south Kashmir's Anantnag district.
Yasir Bhat, son of Ghulam Mohi-ud-din Bhat, a resident of Batapora, Anantnag was apprehended by the Gujarat ATS on Friday morning in Anantnag, reports said. Yasir, key accused in 2002 Akshardham temple terror attack, was evading arrest from last many years.
On September 24, 2002, two armed militants had attacked the temple in Gandhinagar, Gujarat, killing 30 and injuring eight devotees. Both the militants were killed by National Security Guards (NSG) commandos. The attack followed the Godhra riots in the same year.
Sources told Early Times that Yasir was a close associate of the prime conspirator Shan Miya alias Chand Khan who hails from Bareilly in Uttar Pradesh.
Earlier, Gujarat police had arrested five persons allegedly involved in the attack, and accordingly in July 2006, the POTA court awarded death sentence to Adam Ajmeri, Shan Miya alias Chand Khan, and Mufti Abdul Qayyum Mansuri. Mohammed Salim Shaikh from Ahmedabad was sentenced to life imprisonment, Abdul Miyan Qadri got a 10-year term and Altaf Hussain five years.
In 2008, some of the convicts appealed against the sentence in the High Court. On May 30, 2010, the Gujarat High Court confirmed the death sentence awarded to three persons and prison terms to three others.
During the course of investigation, it was found that the conspiracy to attack Akshardham was planned in Riyadh and hatched by militant outfits Jaish-e-Mohammad, Lashkar-e-Taiba, with the help of Pakistan's ISI. However, the Jammu and Kashmir Police claimed that the attack was planned in Anantnag and Chand Khan was the key conspirator.
Media reports even had quoted Chand Khan saying that two LeT militants had made a minister's residence their hideout before leaving for the attack in Gujarat. |
