The Mumbai police has launched a massive manhunt for Dr Jalees Ansari who earned the sobriquet of ‘Dr Bomb’ after he went missing from his residence in Mominpura area in south Mumbai on Thursday early morning.
“Ansari was serving life imprisonment in Ajmer central prison in Rajasthan but was brought to Mumbai and kept in Arthur Road jail. He was released from Arthur Road jail on parole a month ago and supposed to report back on January 17 by 11 am,” said a Mumbai crime branch officer.
Ansari had been accused of plotting and executing several bomb blasts across the country in early nineties to avenge the demolition of Babri Masjid. Ansari allegedly helped set off a series of 43 explosions in Mumbai and Hyderabad and seven separate explosions on trains on December 6, 1993, the first anniversary of the Babri Masjid’s demolition. Later, he was convicted for carrying out blast in trains.
Ansari’s wife approached Agripada police station on Thursday after they found Ansari’s phone switched off and tried all possible means to locate him but could not establish any contact with him. The Mumbai police along with Anti-Terrorism Squad, Mumbai crime branch and several other wings of Mumbai police have been alerted and have been looking for him, police said.
For Ansari it all began in 1985, at a meeting in the Ahl-e-Hadis Mosque in Mominpura, Mumbai. Activists of the Ahl-e-Hadis’ ultra-conservative Gorba faction had gathered to speak about the need for armed Muslim resistance to the wave of communal violence in India since early that year. One the speakers was Azam Ghauri, the fifth of 11 children from an impoverished family in Andhra Pradesh, had flirted with the People’s War Group (PWG) before discovering religion and becoming a dreaded Lashkar-Taiba operative.
With Ghauri was Abu Masood, a Gorba preacher from West Bengal , and Abdul Karim ‘Tunda’ (for he has a deformed arm). The latter went on to become the LeT’s top operative in India. At the end of the meeting, they formed the Tanzim Islahul Muslimeen (TIM), an organisation committed to the defence of Muslims during communal riots.
TIM’s early activities were mildly farcical. Ghauri and Tunda held drills at the YMCA ground in Mominpura, teaching their cadre unarmed combat techniques as well as the use of lathis.
Among their most enthusiastic recruits was Jalees Ansari, son of a worker at the now-closed Raghuvanshi Mill on Tulsi Pipe Road. Ansari’s father, who had arrived as a labourer from Uttar Pradesh had saved enough to give his children a future. In 1972, Ansari graduated from the Maratha College at Nagpara, and went on to study at the Sion Medical College. After a brief stint at private practice, he joined the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation as a Junior Medical Officer.
