Overview

• A joint team of the Tamil Nadu Anti-Terrorism Squad and Coimbatore City Police arrested Sadiq alias Tailor Raja on July 9 in Karnataka’s Vijayapura district based on credible intelligence.
• Raja had lived under the alias Shahjahan Shaik for over a decade as a chilli commission agent while evading arrest since 1996.
• Investigators say he rented premises in Coimbatore where he manufactured and distributed bombs for the February 1998 serial blasts that killed 58 people and injured more than 250.
• He faces additional charges in multiple communal murder cases, including a 1996 petrol bomb attack that killed a jail warden and the 1997 murder of a Madurai jailor.
• His capture follows the recent arrests of Abubacker Siddique and Mohamed Ali, marking the third major apprehension of long-absconding terror suspects by the state ATS.