Author: Praveen Swami
Publication: The Hindu
Date: August 17, 2006
URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2006/08/17/stories/2006081706120900.htm
Introduction: Investigations into the serial
bombings in Mumbai might end in a replay of the 1993 terror strikes - with
the perpetrators out of reach.
Police Officials are confronting the prospect
that investigations into last month's serial bombings in Mumbai might end
in a replay of the murderous 1993 terror strikes in the city: a wealth of
detail has emerged on just who carried out the operation and why, but the
perpetrators themselves are out of reach - perhaps forever.
Over the past four weeks, investigators from
the Mumbai and Maharashtra police, acting with the support of the Intelligence
Bureau, have put together a coherent picture of the Lashkar-e-Taiba cells
which executed the Mumbai bombings. In essence, investigators now believe
three interlocking cells, each acting with only limited knowledge of the others'
work, implemented separate parts of the operation.
Two of these cells have now been identified,
and their key operatives arrested. Mumbai businessman Faisal Sheikh, and his
Bangalore-based brother Muzammil Sheikh, a computer engineer, are alleged
to have run what can be described as the "Cadre Cell" - the group
which organised training and funds for the dozens of men recruited from Mumbai-based
Islamist networks by the Lashkar.
Cadre Cell recruits, the Maharashtra police
say, were flown to Teheran using legitimate travel documents before being
escorted by Lashkar operatives across the largely un-policed Iran-Pakistan
border into Balochistan. From there, the men were driven to the Bahawalpur
area of Pakistan's Punjab province for training under the personal supervision
of the Lashkar's long-standing commander for operations targeting India, Azam
Cheema.
Khalid Aziz Raunak Sheikh and Kamal Ahmed
Vakil Ansari, who were arrested in Patna on July 21, ran what investigation
insiders call the "Infrastructure Cell." Along with Mumbai resident
Mumtaz Ahmad Chaudhuri, the men are alleged to have provided at least part
of the explosive used in the bombings, after an earlier cache intended for
the operation was interdicted by the Maharashtra police in Aurangabad in May.
Most important, though, was the "Perpetrator
Cell": the group that actually organised the bombings. Rahil Abdul Rahman
Sheikh, a long-standing Lashkar operative who is known to have been active
since at least 2003, is believed to have had overall control of this third
cell. Sheikh reported to a Pakistani national so far identified only as "Junaid"
- most likely an alias - who he is thought to have periodically met in Kathmandu.
Zabiuddin Ansari, who handled the landing
of the 43 kg of RDX which was found in Aurangabad, along with 16 assault rifles,
grenades, and detonators, is in turn believed to have been assigned the task
of ensuring the physical organisation of the Mumbai bombings. Fayyaz Ahmad
Kagdi, the author of the attempted bombing of a Mumbai-Ahmedabad train earlier
this year, was the third core member of the Perpetrator Cell.
Ever since a botched Delhi police-led raid
in April, though, investigators seeking to locate Sheikh have had little success.
Sheikh was identified as a key Lashkar operative in the course of the interrogation
of Mumbai residents Feroze Abdul Latif Ghaswala and Mohammad Ali Chippa, who
were planning large-scale terror strikes in Gujarat under the command of a
Pakistani national, Bahawalpur resident Mohammad Iqbal.
Police sources said Sheikh had evaded arrest
by jumping out of the Mahim building he was hiding in at the time of the raid,
sustaining fractures in the process. "There were serious errors in the
execution of the raid," a source in the serial bombing investigation
told The Hindu, "as well [as] successive failures in coordination between
the Delhi police and its counterparts in Maharashtra and Gujarat."
What little information is available on Sheikh's
current location has come from Abdul Samad Samsher Khan, a Beed resident who
was arrested in Manmad on July 27. Khan told investigators that he had briefly
met Sheikh at a safehouse in Bangladesh shortly after the bombings. Police
arrested Khan in Bihar after his return from the meeting - but by then the
cellphone number he had used to contact Sheikh was no longer in use.
However, Khan's interrogation failed to yield
any hard information on the bombings themselves. Khan has insisted through
hours of painstaking questioning that Sheikh gave him hard information on
the cell that actually executed the attacks. No progress has been made in
locating Ansari, either, although intelligence officials believe he may be
in Pakistan. On Kagdi, too, there is no word at all.
North, south, east, west
Not surprisingly, then, investigators have
yet to identify the 12-odd men thought to have executed the bombings on the
Perpetrator Cell's instructions - men who, police believe, boarded southbound
trains at Grant Road or Charni Road, planted bombs in the luggage racks above
the seat, and then got off as a wall of commuters rushed in for the return
journey to Mumbai's suburbs from the Churchgate terminus.
Some believe that Sheikh may well have drawn
on Lashkar cadre from Bangladesh to execute the bombings - or, in the alternate,
provided the Perpetrator Cell's foot-soldiers with shelter there after the
operation. Others speculate that Jammu and Kashmir-based Lashkar operatives
might have played a role in the attacks, noting that three Sopore men linked
to the terror group were arrested in Mumbai's Nagpada area in January.
Indeed, it is possible that more than one
jihadi organisation may have collaborated to execute the Mumbai bombings.
On August 14, for example, the Border Security Force announced the arrest
of Pakistani nationals Mohammad Zubair and Mohammad Sohail from Hingalganj,
along the India-Bangladesh border. Sohail, a Jaish-e-Mohammad operative, had
been tasked with collaborating with Zubair, who worked for the Lashkar.
BSF officials say the men, both Karachi residents,
were on their way to Uri to discuss the mating of several consignments of
explosives they had smuggled into India since July with terrorist cadre from
Jammu and Kashmir. Lashkar, Jaish, and Harkat-ul-Jihad Islami operatives have
collaborated in several recent attacks on targets in India, most notably the
bombing of Varanasi in March this year.
Part of the reasons for the blurring of organisational
lines might lie in the fact that jihadi operatives in India are recruited
from loose, subterranean Islamist networks, rather than structured bodies
of the kinds which operate openly in Pakistan and Bangladesh. Sheikh, for
example, recruited Ghaswala during an April 2003 convention organised by the
Jamaat Ahl-e-Hadis, a religious sect from which the Lashkar draws much of
its cadre.
Zakir Naik, a well-known Mumbai-based television
evangelist, was the star speaker at the convention. Although there is no suggestion
that Naik's Islamic Research Foundation itself played any role in the bombings,
Sheikh and other Mumbai Lashkar operatives are known to have often visited
the religious centre - which also, significantly, features as an approved
source of religious-ideological information on the Lashkar's website.
Indeed, sources in the investigation said,
the men arrested so far did not act as Lashkar agents. "From their interrogations,"
one official said, "it is clear most of the cell members did not know
or care what the Lashkar even was." Instead, most believed they were
soldiers in a global jihad, mining Islamist organisational assets like those
of the Lashkar for their local cause - a war against what they saw as a Hindu
state.
One major insight the Mumbai bombings holds
out for India's intelligence services is the need to carefully monitor Islamist
religious-ideological networks. While not a little success has been registered
in classical criminal-intelligence work targeting jihadi groups and their
operational leadership, State police forces simply do not have the specialist
skills or technological assets necessary for sustained monitoring - a major
deficiency.
"We could find the bombing perpetrators
tomorrow - or never at all," says a senior Maharashtra police official.
"A lucky break could lead to a breakthrough," he continues, "but
the truth is it is very unlikely top operatives like Sheikh will ever return
to India." The hunt for the perpetrators will, of course, continue for
months to come. Finding them, though, is perhaps less important than learning
the right lessons from the bombings.
