LeT terrorist Abdul Karim Tunda held guilty in 1996 Sonipat bomb blasts case

Rohtak: Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) bomb expert Syed Abdul Karim Tunda was on Monday pronounced guilty in 1996 Sonipat bomb blasts case by a court in Haryana.

The court here will pronounce the quantum of sentence on Tuesday.

Twin blasts had rocked Sonipat`s on December 28, 1996, injuring around a dozen people.

A resident of Pikhuwa in Uttar Pradesh's Ghaziabad district, Tunda was arrested by Delhi police from Indo-Nepal border in 2013. The CBI had charged him with organising LeT's major terror attacks outside Jammu and Kashmir.

Tunda, an aide of fugitive don Dawood Ibrahim, is involved in around 40 bomb blast cases in Mumbai, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab, Hyderabad and Surat, added Srivastava. Tunda, who is wanted in 21 cases in Delhi alone, has been closely associated with Jamaat-ud-Dawa chief Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, who is wanted in India for the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack, Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, a top LeT commander and another accused in the 26/11 attacks, Adam Cheema, wanted in connection with the Mumbai blasts, Wadhawa Singh Babbar, who leads the Babbar Khalsa International, Ratandeep Singh, Karachi-based Indian Mujahideen absconders Abdul Aziz alias Bada Sajid and others, police had said after his arrest.

He was arrested in January 1994. But he escaped to Dhaka, Bangladesh and taught making bombs to jihadi elements. He further travelled to Pakistan to train youth in LeT-organised camps. In 1996, he returned to Dhaka and then to India. In 1997, he was involved in a bomb blast that took place at Rampura bus stop near Punjabi Bagh in west Delhi in a Blueline bus plying between Ajmeri Gate and Nangloi. At least two people were killed and 22 were injured in the incident.

In 2008, when India had demanded Pakistani government to turn over 20 most wanted terrorists to demonstrate its seriousness about fighting terrorism after the 26/11 attack on Mumbai, Tunda alias Abdul Quddooss had a prominent place in it.