The Kerala Police on Wednesday arrested Manoj Kumar Bhanwarlal Gupta alias Munna (48), 24th accused in the case of the 1993 Mumbai blasts in which 257 people had been killed, from Kannur. The CBI had been searching for the absconding accused, against whom a warrant had been issued, for the past several months.
The Kannur town police arrested Manoj Kumar, who had embraced Islam at the age of 13 and had become an underworld operative, from his wife’s house at Athazhakkunnu near Kakkad, Kannur early Wednesday morning on the basis of secret information received by the District Superintendent of Police, sources said.
Described as a disciple of Dawood Ibrahim, he is said to have participated in the infamous Shekhadi landing of a huge cache of arms, ammunition, hand grenades and RDX from Mumbai in Raigad. It was found that the arms and explosives used in the blasts were the same materials he and others had landed in Raigad.
Manoj Kumar, originally a native of Uttar Pradesh, had undergone 14-year life imprisonment for his role in the Mumbai blasts and had been released in 2008. However, the CBI started the search for him after the Supreme Court defined life imprisonment as life-long imprisonment in the case of the blasts convicts.
Termed as a habitual absconder, Manoj Kumar had married Raziya from Kannur while in Mumbai and shifted to her place in Kerala. When the CBI began searching for him, he reportedly escaped to Uttar Pradesh. The Kerala Police laid the net for him after they received information that he would be coming to Athazhakkunnu on Tuesday night.
According to the local residents at Athazhakkunnu, Munna was not in the habit of leaving his wife’s house since he started living there. A warrant issued by the Greater Mumbai court had been pending against him. The police said that they had informed the CBI of his arrest and were expecting officials from the agency to reach Kannur soon.