Author:
Publication: BJP Today
Date: October 16-31, 2001
A dangerous cat and mouse game is
being played between the police and Students Islamic Movement of India
(SIMI), whose ban a few states have sought.
On March 11, SIMI Pune unit chief
Sajid Sundke was arrested, along with four associates on charges of making
inflammatory speeches at a mosque at Ghorpade Peth, which led to communal
riots. Shortly afterwards, Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Chhagan Bhujbal
said in the assembly that Karachi-based gangster Chhota Shakeel was in
league with SIMI to incite communal riots.
Fires of hatred: Smoke billows out
from a shop in Kanpur in March. Six people died in the violence
On March 16, an additional district
magistrate, C. P. Pathak, and five others died in a clash between the police
and a mob in Kanpur. Violence had erupted when the police prevented people
from assembling after Friday prayers to register their protest against
the alleged burning of a copy of the Koran in Delhi, following the Taliban
attack on the Bamiyan Buddhist statues in Afghanistan. Later, the Uttar
Pradesh government said it had evidence to prove SIMI's involvement in
the Kanpur violence.
On Independence Day, a bomb blast
on the Sabarmati Express near Faizabad in Uttar Pradesh caused the death
of 10 passengers. Aqeel Mohammed, a SIMI member, was arrested on a charge
of planting the bomb but was later released.
On July 31, the police arrested
nine persons in Jalgaon in north Maharashtra. Investigations revealed that
they had been selected for a Hizbul Mujahideen camp in Delhi in August
last year. In September, according to the police, they crossed the Line
of Control in Kashmir and received training by Hizbul militants in making
bombs and using weapons. "We suspect they were there for three months,"
said an intelligence officer. Out of the nine, two were described as SIMI
activists. "This clearly-shows the link between SIMI and the Hizbul Mujahideen,"
said Kulwant Kumar, Jalgaon superintendent of police. "The arrests expose
Hizbul's strategy of enlisting the support of fundamentalist cadres like
SIMI," said Home Secretary Kamal Pande. SIMI's Nagpur unit president, Mohammed
Irshad, said that none of the nine men belonged to SIMI and the organisation
had no links with Hizbul Mujahideen.
SIMI was started at Aligarh Muslim
University on April 25, 1977, and its members are mostly in the 15-30 age
group. It has a women's cell, a cell for children in the 7-11 age group
called Shabeen Force, and a Dawah cell for reconversion of those purified"
by the shuddhikaran movement of the Sangh Parivar. Like the Rashtriya Swayamsevak
Sangh, SIMI has full-time workers, known as Ansars, who get an honorarium
of Rs 3,000 a month and part-time workers called Ikhwans.
The Mumbai police suspect that SIMI
receives funding from abroad, primarily the Middle East. A Kerala police
intelligence dossier says that it may be getting funds from World Assembly
of Muslim Youth in Riyadh and that it has links with International Islamic
Federation of Students" Organisations in Kuwait, the Chicago-based Consultative
Committee of Indian Muslims and Jamaat-i-Islam units in Pakistan, Bangladesh
and Sri Lanka. There is also a suspicion of underworld funding.
SIMI is very active in Uttar Pradesh,
parts of Madhya Pradesh, Assam, Gujarat, and Kerala. The Kerala unit, headquartered
in Kozhikode, has 1,000 cadres, mostly from Malappuram and Kozhikode districts.
"The liberation of the country can come only through Islam," said K. T.
Mohammad, state president. "Peaceful propagation is our style of functioning."
Mohammad denied allegations of extremist
activities and said the arrest of People's Democratic Party leader Abdul
Nasser Madhani, as a suspect in the 1998 Coimbatore bomb blasts, was part
of "the fascist oppression of Islamic movements".
SIMI has yet to gain an all-India
presence. In Hyderabad, for instance, it has only three members. "Our job
is to propagate Islam and its tenets to every citizen," said Atthar Querishi,
president. The three member team conducts classes every Friday and Sunday.
The Students" Islamic Organisation has a wider reach in Andhra Pradesh.
In May, the Madhya Pradesh government
urged the Centre to proscribe SIMI and, in Maharashtra, Bhujbal has asked
for a ban. The Gujarat government has been most vocal in demanding the
ban. Recently, in Kutch, the police arrested SIMI activists who put up
posters of Maulana Masood Azhar, chief of the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed
militant group.
