National
May 24, 2022

The CBI has taken custody of four persons allegedly involved in the 1993 Bombay serial blasts after they were apprehended and held by Gujarat’s Anti-Terrorist Squad on May 12 – nearly three decades after the March 12, 1993 terror outrage which left 257 dead and over 700 others injured.
According to the reports, the Mumbai court has given the probe agency seven days’ of custody of the four, identified as Abu Bakar alias Abdul Gafoor, Syed Qureshi alias Rahat Jan Qureshi, Mohammad Shoaib Qureshi alias Shoaib Bawa, and Mohammad Yusuf Ismail alias Yusuf Bhatka for its investigation.
The report further added that all the four accused were from Mumbai, but on their passports their addresses were shown as Mira Road (Maharashtra), two from Bengaluru, and one from Tamil Nadu.
The Gujarat ATS had been working on secret information, which they developed further. Acting a tip-off about the presence of four suspicious persons in Ahmedabad, a team was formed under Deputy Superintendent of Police, Kanubhai Patel, which detained the four persons from the Sardarnagar area on the evening of May 12.
Initially, the four accused were booked for carrying forged Indian passports. The arrested persons had Indian passports with the following names — Javed Basha alias Qasim Saab, Syed Abbas Sharif alias Syed Abbas, Syed Yasin alias Abdul Rahman, and Mohammad Yusuf Ismail alias Sheikh Ismail Noor Mohammad.
However, they were later identified as Abu Bakar (Basha), Syed Qureshi (Abbas Sharif), Shoaib Qureshi (Syed Yasin), and Yusuf Ismail (Yusuf Ismail).
308