Dreaded leT commander Abdul Karim Tunda has revealed that he had a meeting with leT chief Hafiz Saeed a week before his arrest from Indo-Nepal border on Friday. Though he has not disclosed the motive behind his plan to enter India, police said the lashkar militant has confessed to have ‘cordial’ relations with Saeed and underworld don Dawood Ibrahim.
Tunda also told investigators that Dawood Ibrahim is being protected by Pakistan spy agency ISI and moves around under its cover. The hardened terrorist remained calm and composed during the interrogation. Tunda even tried to mislead, informed police. “He is not revealing much. He is trying to divert the probe,” sources said.
Tunda, the mastermind of the lethal bomb blasts in Delhi in 1997-98, claimed that it was his first visit to India after 1998. Officials informed that the investigation is not only restricted to his visiting India or his motive behind the visit, but the police are trying to know what he has been doing in the last 20 years.
An important catch for the Delhi Police, Tunda revealed Dawood’s location in Karachi. “He revealed that he had met Dawood on a few occasions and that he is protected by Pakistan’s ISI. Dawood’s movements in Karachi are very restricted and ISI protects him and he can’t move around freely without informing them.”
“Tunda has constantly been in touch with India’s most wanted 20 terrorists and organisations such as ISI, leT, Jaish-e-Mohammed, Indian Mujahiddin and Babbar Khalsa. It was ISI, who introduced him to Hafiz Saeed,” informed the police.
According to the police, Tunda claimed that he met Dawood Ibrahim for the first time at the latter’s residence in Karachi in 2010.
He, however, claimed that he had differences with top leT commander and Mumbai attack mastermind Zaki-ur-Rehman lakhvi, who calls the shots in the terror outfit. Tunda admitted that though he had plans for pan-India operations, he was considered a spent force by lakhvi. “Tunda’s remorse is that he could not scale the terror outfit’s hierarchy as he was termed as a spent force once he arrived in Pakistan from Bangladesh in early 2000,” the officials said. Tunda’s fundamentalist outlook had its roots after he witnessed the 1985 riots in Mominpura area of Nagpur in Maharashtra, sources said, adding it is believed that after this incident he had started working towards preaching youths to wage war against the government.
As a motivational speaker and a master in making explosives, Tunda claimed, he never executed any terror strike himself. Instead, his job was to indoctrinate the new recruits at the terror camps and train them in bomb-making. “He is considered to be a motivational speaker and provokes the youth towards jehad and teaches them how to make bombs and use arms and ammunition,” said an official. Tunda ran madarsas in Karachi under the name of Mehdud-Taleem-Islam-e-Dar-Al-Funoon, which got funds from ISI.
Tunda claimed that in his childhood, a man on his bicycle used to come to sell ‘churan’ in his locality. To draw children’s attention he used to put the churan on a white substance and pour a liquid on it which caught flame. “Tunda being an inquisitive child wanted to know the reason behind the flames. He later learnt that it was due to the potassium on which the churan was put and an acidic liquid poured which made it catch fire,” said a police official.
He had an impression of this in his mind and he used the same trick 30 years later in 1985 and started making bombs. He applied the
same trick using potassium, sugar and sulphuric acid. He started refining the process and came up with his form of bomb.