Author: Suchandana Gupta
Publication: The Times of India
Date: August 17, 2008
By all reckoning, that Madhya Pradesh has
been linked to the Ahmedabad shouldn't come as a surprise to cops who've tracked
SIMI terror on Indian soil. Five batches of SIMI radicals received combat
physical training in MP in 2006-07, the police say.
On April 3, a week after SIMI national president
Safdar Nagori was held from Indore, he took the police to an isolated farmhouse
deep in the forests, surrounded by mountains. It was a one-storied house near
Gawali village, on the banks of Choral river, 35 km from Indore. At first,
the police found nothing unusual except for some literature on SIMI, al-Qaida
and posters of Osama Bin Laden. Then they found a video cassette showing suicide
bombers.
"At first we found little evidence that
a terror training camp had been conducted there. But we went back with sniffer
dogs and metal detectors. The dogs found the spot,'' recalled an SP who led
the operation. "The dogs sniffed a place just outside the farmhouse that
was dug-out. We found 122 super-explosive gelatine sticks, 100 detonators
and switchboards packed in plastic bags and buried under the ground.''
On further scrutiny of the surrounding areas,
police detected a firing range and bits of exploded petrol bombs.
Authorities are still in the dark about the
identity of terrorists trained in this camp. But police claim at least 100
SIMI activists received rigorous physical combat training here.
