What should be the reward for a civilian who risked his life to catch a dreaded terrorist? Well, if you go by Bihar police standards, it’s the princely sum of Rs 3,500 only. Not a penny more and no security either.

And if you think the aware citizen might have caught a petty foot soldier, think again, as the Gaya cyber café owner Anurag Basu, a black belt holder in martial arts, in September 2017 had chased, fought hard and managed to catch Tauseef alias Atik Khan, the mastermind of 2008 Ahmedabad serial blast that killed 56 people and injured over 200 innocents. He did it all alone.

Six months after his brave act, Anurag, sole breadwinner in a family of five that includes his aged parents, is financially broken. Once earning an average of Rs 60,000 a month from the cafe Anurag has virtually turned into a pauper. Customers have stopped visiting his café, fearing revenge attacks from the terrorists.

All four employees at his café have quit. He has not been able to pay his house rent for four months. The landlord has served him notices to vacate. And worse, the Bihar police has abandoned him without offering him any security or financial assistance.

“We are in a deep economic crisis since September. The income from the cyber café has become nil. I am unable to pay the school fee of my six-year-old son,” he said.

Tauseef had started visiting Anurag’s cyber cafe in Gaya’s Rajendra Ashram locality weeks before he was finally caught on September 13. Everything about him looked suspicious. He would carry pen drives to upload emails. Looking over his shoulder, he would always occupy the farthest computer to browse multiple sites. He would spend as much time looking behind as he did watching the screen. He always deleted the browsing history before leaving the cafe. Anurag grew even more suspicious because the man never shared his identity papers when asked.

Though alarmed, Anurag had no reason to act on his suspicions, as he did not know who he was. A few weeks later, Anurag found a Delhi police press release on Internet, one which spoke about most wanted fugitives with their pictures. One of them looked like Tauseef, the man who visited the cafe. As reality sank in, Anurag took printouts of the advertisement that carried the man’s photograph.

He procured phone numbers of police officers in Gaya and also gave his staff a copy of the printout. A week later, when Tauseef Khan visited the cafe again — at sharp 1:32 pm on September 13 — with accomplice Sanna Khan, Anurag gave them the computer they wanted and immediately called the senior superintendent of police.

When his call went unanswered, Anurag moved out of his shop to call other police officials. Tauseef grew suspicious as Anurag kept moving in and out of the cafe to call the cops, who only promised to come. As Anurag made more than a dozen phone calls, Tauseef left the place in a hurry with Sanna Khan without making any payment. Though the cops were still not visible and locals shop owners were unwilling to help, Anurag — a trained marital art specialist — did not give up.

The 29-year-old had to chase the two terrorists on road, locked in a physical fight with them, and was hit by a car during the struggle that broke his two mobile phones. He still kept the two pinned on the road and handed over the duo to a police vehicle that was on a routine patrol.

It was indeed a prized catch. Police investigations revealed that Tauseef, a resident of Juhapura in Ahmedabad, was the main suspect behind the Gujarat blasts. Along with 35-year-old Tauseef, the terrorist’s associate Sanna Khan (40) was also arrested.

Having masterminded the July 2008 Ahmedabad blast, Tauseef had moved 1,600km away in Bihar’s Gaya district where a new identity and a new job were arranged to conceal him. Tauseef, a bachelor in engineering and communication from a Maharashtra-based engineering college, became Mohammad Atik in Gaya, a quiet and affable Mathematics teacher at Karnouni village.

He mixed with the population and remained off the radar of the security agencies for nine years. Later, documents seized from him revealed his plan to recruit Muslim youths as soldiers of ISIS. This was the first established attempt of a terrorist to recruit for ISIS in Bihar.

The Rs 3,500 reward too was released to Basu in February, two months after the Union home ministry in December 2017 in a letter to the Bihar chief secretary Anjani Kumar Singh, advised the state government to provide financial assistance to Basu. The letter was sent by additional secretary Renu Suri on December 8.

“Though it may sound cynical and an inappropriate comparison, the government has done much less for Basu than what the terrorists had done for Tauseef after the Ahmedabad blast,” said a senior police officer in Patna.

(Courtesy of Mail Today.)

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