Bomber involved in 2008 Assam serial blasts nabbed

GUWAHATI - The bomber who drove a car packed with explosives into a business hub in the city, one of the nine serial explosions that ripped through Assam on Oct 30, 2008, has been arrested by sleuths of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in Arunachal Pradesh, officials said Thursday.

The arrest comes less than 24 hours after the investigating agency released photographs of nine terrorists directly linked to the blasts.

A CBI spokesperson said Rahul Brahma of the outlawed National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) was arrested Thursday evening from Zero town in Arunachal Pradesh where he was taking shelter with his wife and child for the past few days.

“This is a major success for us and very soon we are hoping to catch a few more,” Superintendent of Police N.S. Kharayat told IANS.

Brahma drove a Maruti 800 car packed with explosives and parked the vehicle at a crowded business hub in Panbazar. The car bomb went off killing eight people and wounded up to 30 others.

A total of nine near-simultaneous explosions rocked Assam on that day killing 100 people and wounding 500 more, all the blasts blamed on the NDFB.

“Vital clues were provided by NDFB chairman Ranjan Daimary during our nine days interrogation,” the official said.

Daimary was handed over to Indian authorities May 5 by Bangladesh and is now in the custody of Assam Police. Earlier the NDFB terror mastermind was in CBI custody for nine days until Tuesday.

“Daimary has confessed to the crime of masterminding the serial explosions and said the explosives were procured locally from Assam and also from Bhutan,” the CBI official said.

The CBI had already filed a charge sheet naming Daimary and 19 more NDFB militants for the serial blasts.