Nearly 27 years after the devastating 1998 Coimbatore serial blasts that killed 58 people and injured over 250, Tamil Nadu police have arrested one of the key accused from Karnataka. ‘Tailor’ Raja, aged 50, was apprehended on Wednesday, July 9, 2025, by a joint team from the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) and Coimbatore City Police in Karnataka’s Vijayapura district.

Raja, a member of the now-banned extremist group Al Ummah — the organisation responsible for the Coimbatore bombings — was taken to Coimbatore and presented before the Fifth Judicial Magistrate Court on Thursday, July 10. He was remanded in judicial custody until July 24. Also known by multiple aliases, including Sadiq, ‘Valarntha’ Raja, Shahjahan Abdul Majid Makandar, and Shahjahan Shaik, he originally hailed from Bilal Estate in South Ukkadam, Coimbatore.

According to police, Raja had been on the run for 29 years and had never been arrested since 1996. In addition to his role in the 1998 bombings, he was allegedly involved in several other terror-related and communal murder cases. These include a 1996 Molotov cocktail attack in Coimbatore that killed prison warder Boopalan, the Sayeetha murder case in Nagore (1996), and the 1997 murder of jailor Jayaprakash in Madurai.

Raja’s arrest follows recent breakthroughs by the ATS and Coimbatore police, including the capture of two of India’s most-wanted fugitives — Abubacker Siddique and Mohamed Ali alias Yunus — from Andhra Pradesh’s Annamayya district. Authorities noted that Raja’s apprehension marks the third successful arrest of a long-time fugitive involved in serious terror cases.