The Ahmedabad Crime Branch on Sunday arrested a life convict in the 1992 Radhika Gymkhana murder case and the assassination of former Rajya Sabha member and Congress leader Rauf Valiullah and a member of the Abdul Latif gang in Udaipur, Rajasthan, after he was on the run for seven years after a parole jump in 2019, police said.
The accused, Muhammad Tasleem, alias Muhammad Omar Sheikh, was sentenced to life imprisonment.
According to the police, he evaded arrest by constantly changing his identity, location, and communication methods.
“After skipping parole, he fled to Rajasthan, where he settled in Udaipur and worked as a small-time land and property broker. He got married and has two children born during the Covid period. He hid his past by telling people, including some family members, that he had served his sentence and was a free man,” said Ajit Rajyan, Deputy Commissioner of Police, Crime Branch.
About four months ago, the Crime Branch received information from Rajasthan about a man who claimed to have been released after being convicted in the Radhika Gymkhana case. The police became suspicious as no defendant in the case was acquitted or completed his sentence.
A team from the Crime Branch traced him to Rajasthan and carried out a coordinated operation to arrest him. DCP Rajyan said legal procedures are now underway to send him back to Sabarmati Central Jail.
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Police said Tasleem was one of the most ruthless and reliable snipers of the late Abdul Latif, a notorious smuggler and gangster who ran one of the most shocking criminal networks in Ahmedabad during the period of gang rivalry in the 1990s.
On August 3, 1992, Tasleem was part of an armed group that opened fire at the Radhika Gymkhana club in Uddhav district to target smuggler Hansraj Trivedi. Nine people were killed in the shooting. According to police records, automatic weapons, including AK-47 rifles, were used in the incident, the first such use in gang warfare in Gujarat.
In October 1992, Taslim and his associates shot former Rajya Sabha member and Congress leader Rauf Faliullah in Ahmedabad in broad daylight. Police said the killing was linked to Waliullah’s efforts to expose the gang’s role in the Gymkhana case.
