Hyderabad court acquits terror suspect Abdul Karim Tunda

A court in Hyderabad on Tuesday acquitted terror suspect Syed Abdul Karim alias Tunda in connection with a case of allegedly conspiring to carry out a series of blasts in Hyderabad in 1998.

The Metropolitan Sessions Court Judge, which had earlier deferred the verdict in the case to Tuesday, acquitted Tunda, a suspected Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) bomb expert, on the grounds that prosecution was not able to produce sufficient evidence against the accused.

A case was registered against Tunda and others here in 1998 on charges of conspiring to carry out blasts during the Ganesh festival in Hyderabad. According to Hyderabad police, Tunda was a co-conspirator in the case and had trained some of the other accused in preparing bombs and explosives and he was termed as a "hardcore terrorist" of the LeT module.

The case was registered under various sections of the IPC including criminal conspiracy, Arms Act, Explosives Substances Act, Passport Act and Foreigners Act. Police have said of the 28 accused, some of them were arrested and convicted while the remaining were absconding.

Tunda, one of India's most-wanted terrorists and mastermind of over 40 bombings in the country, was arrested by central security agencies from the Indo-Nepal border at Banbasa on August 16, 2013. He was subsequently arrested by the Hyderabad Police.

He is also suspected of involvement in some other blast cases across the country, some of which are still pending. The 77-year-old Tunda, who is currently lodged in Ghaziabad jail, was one of the 20 terrorists whom India had asked the Pakistan government to hand over after the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks.

(Image credit: PTI)