Yasin claims IM role in Mumbai train blasts

The blasts that killed 209 persons and grievously injured another 714 were the first joint operation of Riyaz Bhatkal and Azamgarh-based terror modules in order to avenge the 2002 Gujarat riots. Shishir Gupta reports.

Updated on: Sep 17, 2013, 08:48:51 IST

Hindustan Times | By Shishir Gupta, NEW DELHI

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Seven years after the Mumbai train blasts on July 11, 2006, arrested Indian Mujahideen terrorist Yasin Bhatkal has revealed that the explosive used in the attack was provided by the group’s Karachi-based co-founder Riyaz Bhatkal in order to avenge the 2002 Gujarat riots and not Lashkar-e-Taiba as claimed by the state police.

As many as seven pressure cooker bombs exploded in local trains within a span of 11 minutes at the peak hours killing as many as 209 persons and grievously injuring another 714.

The Maharashtra police had charge-sheeted 28 persons and arrested 13. Yasin said that the blasts were the first joint operation of Bhatkal and Azamgarh-based terror modules. Azamgarh born Sadiq Israr Sheikh helped Riyaz in bringing the two groups together.

Sheikh came in touch with Riyaz in Mumbai in the late 1990s and was arrested from the city on November 24, 2008. The Azamgarh module was headed by Atif Ameen, killed in the Batla House encounter on September 19, 2008.

Though Yasin didn’t participate in the 7/11 Mumbai attack, his confession is an open secret among security agencies that the operation was of IM and that LeT or those arrested had nothing to do with it.

Despite Sheikh describing the attack in detail, the case was never reopened.

Yasin and Assadullah Akhtar alias Haddi have told interrogators that the attack was designed to target Gujarati businessmen travelling in first class coaches. The RDX used in the pressure cooker bombs was supplied to Riyaz Bhatkal by a courier named Jalaluddin Mullah alias Babu Bhai, who was arrested by the IB and UP Police in June 2007. The timer bombs were made by Azamgarh module bomb makers Ariz Khan and Arif Badar, close friends of Sadiq Sheikh and Atif Ameen.

Although Maharashtra police arrested Ehtesham Siddiqui and 12 others in the 2006 case, the former Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) secretary of Mumbai cried before his interrogators claiming innocence in the case. Nearly two years after the blasts, SIMI’s president Safdar Nagori was picked up from Indore on March 27, 2008. Nagori is learnt to have begged his interrogators to release his close friend Ehtesham and hang him instead. Several calls made to the Mumbai Police went unanswered.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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