'93 arms landing accused under scanner again

He was called 'dariya ka keeda' (a worm of the sea), because he knows the Arabian Sea like the back of his hand. Suddenly this spent force of DCompany under judicial custody in the arms landing case of 1993 off the Porbander coast, is back under the scanner.

Ahmedabad crime branch will interrogate Umarmiyan Panjumiyan Bukhari alias Mammumiya, who is prime accused in the 1993 Gosabara arms landing case, about the possible sea routes leading to Mumbai from Pakistan.

This after it was learnt that the terrorists who held Mumbai hostage for 60 hours used the route from Karachi via Gujarat to Mumbai, exactly as Mammumiyan did to land Dawood's cache of arms and RDX in Mumbai for the post-Babri blasts in March 1993.

''We believe the illegal sea routes remain the same. We will grill him and try to plug the loopholes in security at Gujarat coast,'' said a crime branch official.