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Yasin Bhatkal sentenced to death: All you need to know about the Indian Mujahideen co-founder

Here's all you need to know about Yasin Bhatkal.

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Yasin Bhatkal, born as Mohammed Ahmed Siddibappa, and co-founder of banned terror outfit Indian Mujahideen was on Monday awarded death penalty by a special NIA court in Hyderabad in the February 2013 Hyderabad blasts case. The simultaneous detonation of two Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) near the Dilsukhnagar bus stop on February 21, 2013, had killed 21 and injured 107.

Yasin Bhatkal figured very high on the list of India's most wanted terrorists. In 2013, he was arrested by Indian agencies near the border in Nepal.  

Here's all you need to know about Yasin Bhatkal:

1. Yasin was born in Bhatkal, Uttara Kannada, Karnataka in 1983. He was educated at Bhatkal’s AnjumanHami-e-Muslimeen school. He speaks English, Hindi, Urdu and Kannada and is believed to be an engineering graduate. 

2. As a teenager, he left for Pune. He was later introduced to other members of the Indian Mujahideen (IM) as a trained engineer. This is in contradiction to the findings of the Pune police which found no documentation suggesting he ever studied in the city. Instead, investigators say, he spent much of his time with a hometown childhood friend, Unani medicine practitioner-turned-Islamist proselytiser Iqbal Ismail Shahbandri. Another theory suggests that he dropped out of class 10. 

3. The Shahbandari brothers - Riyaz and Iqbal Bhatkal, who were activists of the Students Islamic Movement of India, allegedly indoctrinated Bhatkal. They later launched the IM. 

4. The 2013 Hyderabad attack is not the only terror attack that Bhatkal has been linked with. He has been involved in several terror attacks in the country and killings of hundreds of people. He allegedly played an important role in the 2010 German Bakery bomb blast in Pune. 

5. Bhatkal is also believed to have played an important role in the 2011 bombings at Zaveri Bazaar, Opera House and Dadar, killing 26 people and injuring 130.

6. 12 different states claim that Bhatkal planted bombs in at least 10 of the blasts that rocked the country since 2008. Ahmedabad (2008), Surat (2008), Jaipur (2008), New Delhi (2008), Dashashwamedh Ghat in Varanasi (2010), Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru (2010), German Bakery in Pune (2011), Mumbai (2011), Hyderabad (2013) and Bengaluru (2013) are the various places where he is said to have carried out blasts. Chargesheets have been filed by anti-terror agencies from all these places.

7. Yasin is also believed to be an expert bomb-maker.

8. It is also said that the reason why it took so long to nab Bhatkal was because he was a master of disguises.

9. Bhatkal is one of the few criminals who reportedly did not use email. He used to live in rural areas and changed his address regularly. Additionally, according to the ATS he would discard both his SIM card and phone, immediately after making a call.

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