Tunda's son worked for LeT in Kashmir: Police

One-handed bomb-maker Abdul Karim Tunda's one son, out of seven children from three wives, followed in his father's footsteps by working for Laskhar-e-Taiba (LeT) in Jammu and Kashmir and spent eight years in jail, a Delhi Police officer said Monday.

"Abdul Waris, Tunda's third son from second wife Mumtaz named, was involved in a terror activity in Jammu and Kashmir and was later arrested and remained eight years in jail," said a police officer, who did not wish to be named, after the interrogation of Tunda, 70.

Like his carpenter-turned-terrorist father, Waris was also an active member of the LeT and he went back to Pakistan after completing his eight-year jail term in India, said the officer.

Police said Tunda's two wives and six children were living in Pakistan's Lahore city. His family was looking after his cloth factory and perfume business in Lahore and Karachi, police said.

"He first got married in 1964 in Uttar Pradesh's Ghaziabad, his native place. In search of work, he went to Ahmedabad in 1984 and there he married Mumtaz. In 1985, he went to Rajasthan's Tonk area where he started working in a mosque," said the officer.

In Tonk, while making a pipe bomb his left hand got blown-off in 1985 and he got the Tunda moniker - meaning a one-handed man.

Besides, making bomb and indoctrinating youths in Madrassas for Jehad he runs his business, police said.

Besides a cloth factory in Pakistan, he recently he bought clothes and perfume shops in Karachi and Lahore, police said.

At the age of 62, Tunda, over five-feet tall, bespectacled and sporting a flaming red beard, married an 18-year-old woman in Bangladesh, police said.

Investigators said Tunda told them that he went to Bangladesh to evade arrest by Indian agencies.

Three years back his third wife Asmaan delivered a boy who lives with his mother in Bangladesh, the officer said.

Delhi Police Commissioner B.S. Bassi Monday told reporters outside parliament: "It was a big catch. He (Tunda) is in three days police custody."

Tunda would be presented in a court Tuesday over a case in which a consignment of explosives was recovered from south Delhi's Malviya Nagar area in 1994. Seven people were arrested in the case.

Police said Tunda during his questioning hinted at his involvement in the 1997 bombing outside the Delhi Police headquarters in central Delhi.

Tunda was arrested by Delhi Police Aug 16 near Nepal border. Police claim he was involved in more than 40 blasts across India, since 1993.