Yasin Bhatkal, Indian Mujahideen co-founder and one of India’s most wanted terrorist, has been nabbed as a result of a well-coordinated operation by IB and R&AW with security and intelligence agencies of the US, UAE, Nepal.
According to highly placed sources, Bhatkal’s fate was sealed when his presence in Dubai was pinpointed by the US intelligence agencies a few months ago. Bhatkal’s imprint was seen in each and every blast from 2007 onward.
Bhatkal’s fund collection and money transfer activities brought him on the radar of the US agencies, tracking terror financing. Sources say that the US agencies alerted Bhatkal’s activities to Dubai and Indian authorities, leading to his arrest from Nepal border. In Dubai, Bhatkal was mainly active among pro-jehadi Indian, Bangladeshi and Pakistani citizens.
Though IB, R&AW and MHA officials are tightlipped on how Bhatkal moved or reached from Dubai to Nepal, sources point out it was result of joint operation among US, UAE, and Indian agencies.
“We can not divulge or give ball-by-ball commentary on such operations having international ramifications. This operation can be described as classic textbook case of trans-national coordinated operation, involving technical and manual intelligence involving several agencies,” said a senior MHA official.
According to sources, a joint team of Central intelligence agencies and the Bihar Police was camping for several days in Darbhanga for his arrest. The R&AW and the IB were also involved in keeping an eye on his movement after US agencies tipped India that Yasin was living incognito on Bihar-Nepal border as a homoepathic doctor.
Sources said Nepal intelligence agencies and police were also part of the operation. Sources say Bhatkal may have been arrested by the Nepal police and handed over to Indian agencies and Bihar police later.
Indian agencies confirm that he was using several Indian passports as well as Pakistani passports for the past five years on his exit from Dubai. But the official version is that he was apprehended from Nepal border when he was on his way to meet handlers in Bangladesh.
Thirty-year-old mastermind of several bomb blasts which killed more than 300 people in the past six years had escaped twice when he was apprehended by Kolkata and Mumbai police using his fake identities. In Kolkata, the State police had no clue, when he was caught in 2009 and managed to escape by getting bail using fake identity.
He was caught on CCTV just before the German bakery blast in Pune in 2010 and later at blasts at Cyberabad’s Dilkhush Nagar earlier this year. Earlier, he managed to flee less than an hour before police raided the IM safe house in the Bhadra forests outside Chikmagalur in October, 2008.