Thirty one years after he went absconding in the wake of his arrest and subsequent grant of bail, the Mumbai police have tracked down and re-arrested a 1992-93 Mumbai riots case from Sewri in south-central Mumbai. 

Identifying the re-arrested accused as one Sayed Nadirshah Abbas Khan (65), the police said that the absconding accused was taken into custody by a team of police officials from his Sewri home by the Rafi Ahmed Kidwai Marg police station during the weekend.

Sayyed Khan — who had earlier been arrested by the police under Indian Penal Code sections 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 307 and 34 on charges of attempt to murder and other riot-related cases — had jumped the bail and absconded. He had not attended his trial proceedings.

Sayyed Khan had been named as an accused in a case of attempted murder and unlawful assembly during the communal riots that erupted in the metropolis in the wake of the demolition of the Babri Masjid in December 1992.

“After having been granted bail from judicial custody, Sayyed  Khan had disappeared. An arrest warrant had been issued against him way back in 1995. We were on the look-out for him for years. Subsequently, he was declared by a court as a proclaimed absconder. The court had even issued a non-bailable warrant against him,”   Station Senior Police Inspector Satish Pawar  of the Rafi Ahmed Kidwai Marg Police station said.

The police had been tabs in the area where he lived. Recently, the police managed to lay hands on the mobile phone records of his relatives.

The -investigators later learnt that he was planning to visit his Sewri home on Saturday. Accordingly, they laid a trap for him and re-arrested when he visited home.