"Return of the Memons: A Pyrrhic Victory" continues...

But the presence of a number of Pakistani passports and sundry documents therein raised suspicion. The Head Constable took Yusuf to the senior-most supervisory officer on duty, a young Deputy Superintendent of Police, who gave the passports a close look. The officer was the sort who keeps himself well-informed and was reasonably clued up with the details of the terror attack on Bombay. He asked Yusuf, rather bemusedly: ‘Aren’t you Yaqub Memon?’ Yusuf nodded his
head affirmatively.

The Nepal Police had nabbed one of the most wanted accused in the serial Bombay Blast Case of March, 1993. Yaqub, one of the younger brothers of Tiger Memon, masquerading as Yusuf Ahmed, was considered one of the key conspirators and executioners of the terror operation. He had met his nemesis and, as events would later unfold, so had several members of his family.

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H.C. Singh, my Superintendent of Police in the STF, acting on a tip-off in the wee hours of
August 5, 1994, arrested Yaqub from New Delhi Railway Station. He was interrogated at length and found quite forthcoming and cooperative. The facts mentioned by him about his arrest in Nepal and the events preceding it are based solely on his disclosure and were not verified by us. His statement about his own conduct and that of the Memon family, before and after the blasts, fell very much in line with what we knew already. The suitcase recovered from him contained a large number of documents that included original Pakistani passports issued to his family members and himself, papers connected with properties in Pakistan, identity papers issued to Memons by the Pakistani government, micro audio cassettes secretly recorded by Yaqub of his conversations with the Pakistani masterminds behind the serial blasts of Bombay, video cassettes incriminating Pakistan etc. The evidence and information contained in these documents went on to fill the gaps and join the dots in our investigation. The evidence was useful in nailing Pakistan’s role in the conspiracy but was equally damning material against the Memon family and Yaqub himself.

To be continued...