The arrest of several
educated, well-placed youth in Bengaluru, Hubli and Hyderabad
The Jihad
network never sleeps
It’s not without
reason that Union home secretary R.K. Singh, at a high level security review
meeting, described as a 'cause for concern' the profile of the operatives
arrested following the smashing of a Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami and
Lashkar-e-Tayyaba module earlier this week across Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and
Maharashtra.
The module
included a journalist, a DRDO researcher, a doctor, an engineer, and an MBA
student from Hyderabad .
The investigation and hunt for more members of the module has now spread to Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh.
So, is this the
new face of terror in the country — well-educated, tech savvy and
well-networked?
If recent intelligence inputs are any indication to go by, outfits like the
Students’ Islamic Movement of India and the Indian Mujahideen are now targeting
educated youth, even professionals working in various fields.
Due to the
pan-India presence of both SIMI and IM, they serve as the main 'resource
centre' for providing highly trained networks of sleeper cells to terror
outfits like HuJI, Lashkar and Jaish-e-Mohammed.
According to the
latest Intelligence Bureau estimates, there are as many as 20,000 members of
SIMI in ‘sleeper cells’ across India .
After SIMI was banned, its entire cadre went underground and started helping
major terrorist groups. A splinter group of the SIMI eventually went on to
float Indian Mujahideen.
As Madhur
Krishna Dhar, a former joint director of the Intelligence Bureau, points out,
“It is now a known fact that terror groups are recruiting educated youth,
particularly those who have some kind of an IT background and are tech-savvy
because they are quicker at picking up skills for making improvised explosive
devices and using the Internet, as the Assam propaganda showed.’’
Sources say that
Intelligence Bureau chief Nehchal Sandhu has pointed out in his assessment to
the Home ministry that outfits like HuJI and IM have developed a formidable
network in Southern India , courtesy SIMI.
In fact, it is
believed that top IM commander Yasin Bhatkal has specifically asked his key
operatives to target young men studying in engineering colleges. A case in
point is Fasih Mohammed, an IM operative detained in Saudi Arabia , who studied
engineering in Karnataka.
Another former
top IB official S.K. Gupta says the first indication of educated men getting
lured by terror groups came almost a decade ago when a terror module in Pune
was busted. The accused, a Lashkar operative, was an engineering student. Now
the phenomenon has spread across the country.
In fact, as
recently as Friday, at a top level Home ministry briefing, the IB director
talked about how a module of seven to eight terrorists, all educated Indian
youth, had sneaked into Assam after getting trained in Bangladesh.
Former Research
and Analysis Wing (RAW) chief A.K.Verma says there is no denying the fact that
the terror outfits now have a vast network of sleeper cells that provides logistical
support for any major strike in the country.
He says recent
incident like the Mumbai serial bombings in 2011 or recent blasts in Pune prove
that while the 'men and hardware' that actually carried out the blasts came
from outside, they had strong local support. This is where SIMI network is
extremely effective. The sleeper cells provide 'boarding and lodging, and recce
tours' of possible targets.
A senior
intelligence official admitted that this is precisely the reason why in most
important cases investigating agencies at best are only able to catch the
'fringe elements' and not the actual perpetrators of terror attacks since they
leave the country after the incident.
Mr Dhar also
argues that Pakistan ’s
Inter Service Intelligence has played a crucial role in bringing about a
greater co-ordination among various Pakistan-based terror outfits and SIMI and
IM, ensuring that whichever of its terror outfits wants to carry out an attack,
local support is always there. This was also revealed in the smashing of the
Darbhanga module of the IM in which a Jaish operative, Qateel Siddiqui, was
also arrested and who revealed that Jaish and Lashkar had close ties with IM.
Mr Gupta agrees
that SIMI’s network is present in virtually all states. “It’s there right from Assam to Gujarat and from Kashmir Valley Assam issue, this network in the
South was used by Pakistan-based outfits,’’he added.
What is also
alarming is that intelligence agencies have cautioned the Home Ministry that
Kerala has become the biggest centre of hawala operations in the South.
Money is said to
be coming in from Saudi Arabia
and is being used fund the terror machinery of SIMI and IM in Karnataka, Andhra
Pradesh, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu. In fact,
members of the Darbhanga module had associates as far down south as in Tamil
Nadu.
Terrorist
groups’ use of tech-savvy cadres and networked cells across states,
Intelligence Bureau officials admit, are making investigations into
terror-related cases increasingly difficult.
“Because of
their pan-India presence and networked nature, when one cell is smashed in,
say, Kashmir valley, its nodes pop up in Gujarat
or elsewhere. The Darbhanga module had links in Karnataka, Andhra, Tamil Nadu,
Gujarat and Kashmir ,’’ a senior intelligence
official remarked.
New Delhi’s
worried security establishment has directed all agencies to ensure that every
investigation into every module that is cracked reaches its logical conclusion
across state borders, rather than leaving loose ends hanging at the borders of
states.
Educated,
alienated and radicalized
While going
through his curriculum vitae his prospective employer — the editor of popular
Kannada news daily — gave him a hard look; tossed his CV across the table and
reportedly said that it was that of a Taliban. This was Mati-ur-Rehman
Siddique’s first attempt at applying for a job and he was angry at being
targeted, for what he believed was his proficiency in Urdu and being a keen
scholar of Islam.
Originally from
Uttar Pradesh, the 26-year-old journalist employed with prominent English news
daily was arrested on August 29 by the CCB along with his five room-mates for
alleged involvement in plotting the assassination of BJP politicians and right
leaning journalists. Devout, bright and aloof, Siddique has become the
flashpoint of a debate among hardliners, civil society and law enforcement
agencies in the country.
Says Karnataka
Muslim Muttahida Mahaz (KMM) leader Masood Abdul Khader: “There’s a systematic
conspiracy to profile educated Muslim youth as terrorists. Our youth feel they
are part of the country and are proud to be Indians. We want to be included in
nation building but we are being sidelined. Our political leadership has also
disappointed us.”
That’s one side
of the story. The other is the views of a senior police officer: “We have
executed the arrests after collecting solid evidence. The accused are involved
in a conspiracy to assassinate BJP leaders and journalists. There was a clear
attempt to plant Siddique in the media because of the power and access the
media enjoys. He is part of a new terror module, which is committed to jihad.”
Even as the dust
settles on the mass exodus of the North East people from the City, triggered by
the hate SMSes and doctored MMS of — a 'sample' of psy jehad allegedly launched
by Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence — the Central Crime Branch, City
police on August 29 busted a new unnamed 'Hubli module' — an alleged offshoot
the Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) banned in 2001 under the
Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA).
They arrested 11
Muslim youth — six from the City and five from Hubli — accused of being a part
of the plot hatched by their handlers in Saudi Arabia to eliminate Bharatiya
Janata Party politicians and pro-BJP journalists, under concerned sections of
the Indian Penal Code, UAPA and the Arms Act.
Two days later,
the Andhra police on August 31 arrested Obaid Rehman — the 12th accused — an
MBA student — suspected to be involved in the same conspiracy. Among the
arrested were Mati-ur-Rehman Siddique — the journalist; Riyaz Ahmed Byahatti, a
BCA graduate and salesman; Mohd Yusuf Nalband, also a salesman; Ajaz Ali Mirza,
a junior engineer at the Defence Research Development Organis-ation, Shoaib
Ahmed Mirza, an MCA student and Abdullah Hakim Jamadar. Those arrested from
Hubli include Ubedullah Imran, Mohammed Sadiq Lakshkar, Wahid Hussain, Dr Zafar
Iqbal Sholapur and Mehboob alias Baba.
The arrests,
strongly challenged by the families of the accused as 'illegal and
undemocratic' to 'target innocent educated Muslim youth' were executed just
days before they were set to execute a 'masterplan' to eliminate the VIPs, said
a senior police officer.
“The conspiracy
was to murder the BJP sympathisers to create communal disharmony on a large
scale and destablise the RSS-ruled BJP government,” he said. What is disturbing
about the arrests is that all the accused men are educated and two were
employed in a prominent Defence organization and media.
The suspects are
not part of the banned terror outfit - the Indian Mujahideen but a new group
employing a completely different modus operandi. “They have used proxies to
send and receive mails and messages to fox Intelligence and police officers at
the behest of handlers in Saudi
Arabia from whom they were taking orders,”
added the officer.
IT
professional in Mumbai attacks
When the Mumbai
crime branch busted the first Indian Mujahideen module in 2008, the officers
were shocked to find among its 21 operatives a highly-paid software engineer in
Pune. Mansoor Ali Peerbhoy, who was recruited to head Indian Mujahideen’s media
wing, was a principal software engineer at Yahoo! India, drawing an annual
salary of over Rs. 17 lakh.
It was he who
hacked the Wi-Fi connection of American national Kennneth Haywood in Navi
Mumbai to send the IM e-mail to newspapers and television channels claming
responsibility for the serial blasts in Ahmedabad that year.
“For Peerbhoy,
it all started in 2004, when he joined an Arabic language course and met Asif
Sheikh, a mechanical engineer, indoctrinated by IM operatives, who befriended
him, pleaded with him to at least help them with computers, and he agreed,”
said an officer familiar with the case.
By 2007, he
agreed to get trained in computer hacking.
On May 18, 2007,
he was in Hyderabad ,
when the bombs exploded at Charminar’s Mecca Masjid. Peerbhoy shocked to see
the bodies, believed a Hindu group was behind it. He decided “it was payback
time”.
The very next
day, he told his interrogators, he contacted IM operatives and told them he was
“ready to take up jihad as his life’s mission”. Having trained him in hacking,
IM now sent him to Bhatkal in Karnataka to train in assembling and handling
explosives, using submachine guns, pistols, bullet-proof jackets and life
vests.
The techie
became a terrorist. The road from Pune, to Bhatkal to Hubli became one that
would be increasingly well-travelled by the time it came to 2012.
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