Today the talk of the country’s most wanted terrorist Alamzeb Afridi, who was once counted among the good Sanskrit speaking students in the school. Then the Gujarat riots in the year 2002 added a new chapter in his life. Until the arrest of Alamzeb Afridi in 2016, no one even knew that he was an accused in the 2008 Ahmedabad blasts that killed 56 people. Because he was living under the name of Mohammad Rafiq, who was later sentenced to life imprisonment in the Ahmedabad blasts case.
Born in September 1986 in Juhapura, Ahmedabad to an animal feed businessman father, Afridi studied at Sunflower School till class 10, where he learned Sanskrit, Urdu and Arabic. Despite his father being jailed for a stabbing incident in 1993, he continued his studies. But at the time of class 10th examination, Gujarat riots broke out. Afridi had told that he had lost many of his family members in the Naroda-Patia massacre.
In 2004, Afridi failed in class 12 while studying at the Falahe Darren School. Then he left his studies and joined Jamaat-e-Islami. Meanwhile, he came in contact with SIMI members and in 2007 reached Halol near Vadodara to attend a terror training camp. On July 26, 2008, five years after he allegedly parked a cycle tied to an IED in Ahmedabad’s Diamond Market, Alamzeb Afridi, a former aide of SIMI, lived in several cities during the absconding.
Afridi worked as a soil contractor in UP, a security guard in Maharashtra, a sweet shop helper in Haryana, an X-ray technician in Gujarat and an AC mechanic in Bengaluru. Alamzeb Afridi was known as Mohammad Rafiq in Bangalore. Afridi/Md. Rafiq was a popular AC mechanic in Bangalore.
Once he filed a complaint of assault against his employer at the South Bengaluru police station. In which the police had also arrested the accused, but no one came to know about Afridi. In 2016, Afridi was arrested by the NIA in connection with the 2014 Bengaluru blasts. Afridi had opened at least 40 Facebook and 24 Gmail accounts during his liaison with IS.
Afridi’s interrogation then revealed how a boy, a victim of the 2002 Gujarat riots, first got involved in the Ahmedabad blasts and then turned into a potential Islamic State (IS) operative by the year 2016. It is to be known that Alamzeb Afridi alias Mohammad Rafiq was sentenced to life imprisonment in the 2008 Ahmedabad blasts case.
