None of the accused in the two terror attacks that Hyderabad had witnessed in 2007 – the blast in Mecca Masjid in August and twin bombings of Lumbini Park and Gokul Chat three months later – had any connection with the city.
They were not even remotely connected to the then united Andhra Pradesh or its Telangana region, which was carved out as a separate State. Of all the terror attacks the city had witnessed till 2007, the detonation of Improvised Explosive Device (IED) during laserium show inside Lumbini Park and setting off of another IED at Gokul Chat, an eatery known for evening snacks, at crowded Kothi was the worst.
Three months earlier on May 18, a powerful IED ripped through Mecca Masjid during Friday noon prayers killing nine persons and injuring several others.
Some residents of Hyderabad and its surrounding districts were cited as accused in the earlier terror attack cases like suicide bomber attack on Task Force office in 2005 and bomb explosion before Saibaba temple at Dilsukhnagar in 2002. While two prime accused in the temple blast case got killed in “exchange of fire” with the police within a few days, all the accused in Task Force office attack were acquitted a couple of years ago.
“Naturally, the general public and even investigators believed some locals could be behind the terror attacks in 2007 as well,” a Telangana Intelligence officer, unwilling to be named, said.
Eventually, the National Investigation Agency arrested some right-wing activists, including Naba Kumar Sarkar alias Swamy Aseemanand, in the case holding them responsible for carrying out blast at the mosque. However, all of them were acquitted in the case.
All the accused in the Mecca Masjid blast case, Aseemanand, Lokesh Sharma, Devender Gupta, Bharat Mohanlal Rateshwar and Rajender Chowdhary, were from other States. Two of the five accused convicted by a local court here on Tuesday in 2007 twin blasts are from Maharashtra.
While Anik Shafique Sayeed is from Bhagyodayangar of Pune, the second convict Mohd Akbar Ismail Chowdhari is also from the same city. Two others acquitted in the case, Mohd. Sadiq Israr Ahmed Shaik and Farooq Sharfuddin Tarkash, are from Pune and Mumbai respectively.
Absconding accused Riyaz Bhatkal and Iqbal Bhatkal are from Karnataka. The third accused at large, Amir Reza Khan, is from Bihar. Even in another terror attack of near-simultaneous twin blasts reported at Dilsukhnagar in 2013, all the accused are from outside the State, say the police records.
