"Gifts from the Gulf" continues...

Our boys lay in wait at the business premises of the property dealer. On November 3, a week after the mess-up in Santalpur, Ashabuddin walked into our trap. He was accompanied by another person identified as Abdul Subhan, who turned out to be the driver of the truck we had trailed the other night. Both Ashabuddin and Abdul Subhan hail from the Mewat area of Haryana bordering Delhi. They had come to the property dealer’s office in a Maruti car. (Interestingly, this car was later connected with Kolkata-based shoe baron Partha Pratim Roy Burman’s kidnapping which figures later in the story.)

During interrogation, they disclosed that their other two accomplices were Yunus Khan, the truck’s owner and Akhtar, a resident of Mewat region in Haryana. Subhan further confessed to having hidden some arms and ammunition from an earlier consignment at his home in village Ghummat Bihari of Gurgaon district. On his disclosure two AK-56 rifles with ammunition were recovered, buried under the ‘chulha’ (earthen cooking fire burner) of his village home.

A CBI team was dispatched to locate and arrest Yunus Khan, the owner of the truck, who was also one of its four occupants on the fateful night of Oct. 22, 2002 when the operation had commenced. The team returned with the man from his village in Alwar district of Rajasthan who confessed to his involvement in the case. However, the fourth accused Akhtar was nowhere to be found despite several raids at his village and elsewhere. He continued to evade arrest till as late as 2012 when he surrendered in court.

To be continued…