Eighty-year-old Abdul Quddus, also known as Abdul Karim Tunda, was cleared by the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act court in Ajmer, Rajasthan, of bomb blasts that occurred in trains in Lucknow, Kanpur, Hyderabad, Surat, and Mumbai on December 6, 1993—a year after the demolition of the Babri Masjid. Many Muslims saw it as a gloomy day, and the violence was intended as payback. However, the TADA court condemned his two co-accused to life in jail. When it came to the 1997 double bombs in Rohtak, Haryana, Tunda was found not guilty in February of last year by a district and sessions court. However, in 2017, a local court found him guilty of the 1996 bomb blasts in Sonipat, Haryana, and he was sentenced to life in jail.
Allegations have been made against him for aiding in the nationwide transit of explosives, funding the Lashkar-e-Taiba, enlisting and sending young Muslim males for terror training, and having connections to the network of wanted criminal Dawood Ibrahim. Following the 2008 Mumbai 26/11 attacks, India asked that Pakistan turn up Tunda, who was one of the top 20 terrorists on its most wanted list.
When an agent such as Tunda is able to be found not guilty in more terror and bombing cases than found guilty—and this is over thirty years after the attacks—it calls into question not just the excessively long legal proceedings but also India’s premier investigative institutions. There are rumours that Tunda, who was reared in Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, and was born in Old Delhi, worked as a carpenter, trash dealer, and textile trader before converting to radical Islam after the turmoil that followed the destruction destroyed his family. From then on, he was either directly or indirectly implicated in forty bomb explosions around the nation. Insufficient evidence was stated in most of his acquittals. It casts doubt on the integrity and dependability of investigations into terror cases that claimed the lives of tens of thousands of innocent Indians that the nation’s top investigative agencies, notably the Central Bureau of Investigation, were unable to successfully prosecute him in court after court. Then, who was behind the explosions? Why did Tunda spend years in prison following his arrest in 2013 if he, who is often referred to as the mastermind, is found not guilty? Although time and a short public memory may have dulled the terror of those years, victims’ families still demand justice and closure.
Abhishek Verma
Author: This news is edited by: Abhishek Verma, (Editor, CANON TIMES)
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