Terror suspect Afzal Usmani escapes from Mumbai court

www.magaloretoday.com

Mumbai, Sept 20, 2013 (NDTV): Afzal Usmani, a suspected member of terror group Indian Mujahideen, has reportedly escaped after he was brought by cops to a Mumbai court for a hearing of his case.

The police said he "disappeared" outside the MCOCA (Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act) court, they do not yet know when. A massive manhunt has been launched.

Usmani, 37, had been brought from Taloja Jail in Navi Mumbai to the sessions Court in south Mumbai along with 22 others at about 1.30 in the afternoon for framing of charges in one of the cases against him.

The MCOCA court hearing the case is on the fifth floor of the building. When the court assembled at about 2.45 pm, Usmani was missing.

He and the others are accused of sending emails minutes before multiple bomb blasts in Ahmedabad in July 2008. Usmani is also accused of transporting and planting explosives in the Ahmedabad blasts and in an attempted bombing in Surat the next day.

20 blasts rocked Ahmedabad in Gujarat on July 26, 2008, within a few hours. More than 50 people died and over 200 were injured. The next day, 22 bombs were found planted across the Surat, 270 km from Ahmedabad.

Usmani’s arrest from Uttar Pradesh a month later on August 27, 2008, had led to a big breakthrough for the Mumbai crime branch, which later claimed that it had succeeded in cracking the Maharashtra module of the Indian Mujahideen based on information from him.

Usmani’s alleged career in crime began as a member of a Mumbai underworld gang. He was allegedly a car thief; in 1996 he was booked for attempt to murder. His name had also cropped up during investigations into many cases of firing in Mumbai.

His brother, Faiz Usmani, had died after questioning by police in connection with the Mumbai blasts of 2011. The family alleged that he had been tortured, but a post mortem report ruled that he died of a heart attack.