Author: VR Jayaraj
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: May 28, 2009
URL: http://www.dailypioneer.com/178972/SIMI-on-regrouping-bid;-sleuths-spring-into-action.html
The Intelligence wing of the Kerala Police
has initiated a multi-pronged operation in coordination with the Anti-Terror
Squad to track the developments in the pro-terror Islamist outfits in the
context of information provided by the Union Home Department that an effort
is going on for the regrouping of erstwhile activists of outlawed Students
Islamic Movement of India (SIMI).
Sleuths of the State police's Intelligence
wing are using various tracking methods like manual tailing of known ex-activists
of SIMI, discreet interview with former sympathizers, close watch of organizations
like the Popular Front of India (NDF), eavesdropping over communication networks
for telephonic discussions, etc in the new circumstance.
Almost all the relatively new Islamic organizations
working in fields like charity, scholarships and theology are under constant
surveillance by the police on special instructions from the Union Home Department.
The Central Intelligence Bureau had earlier found that about 25 organizations
active in Kerala had some kind of connections with the now-defunct SIMI.
Sources in the Special Branch of the State
police said that the Union Home Department's information was not surprising
as the Kerala sleuths had even two years ago understood that several newly
formed organizations, including some campus-based ones, could have been fronts
of the SIMI, which was working through outfits like the Indian Mujahiddeen
under the command of Lashkar-e-Tayyeba. Unfortunately, they said, they were
yet to get clinching evidences for such a nexus.
The IB's assumption is that some SIMI leaders
who are still at large are behind the efforts for a re-grouping. The sleuths
have information that several SIMI leaders and workers had participated in
the training camp held at Vagamon, Idukki, which had formed the practical
launchpad of the Indian Mujahiddeen terror acts in the various Indian cities
last year, are planning a regrouping.
Most of the leaders of SIMI have already been
arrested by the police still do not have any knowledge about several second-line
leaders of the banned outfit. The assumption is that these leaders are driving
the re-grouping efforts in Kerala. These people also could be getting active
help from the newer outfits which are functioning as fronts.
Sources in the police admitted that the investigations
into the terror network had gone slack after the general elections were declared
but added that they were back into full-fledged action now. The interrogation
of Sarfaras Nawaz, Oman-based LeT fundraiser, PDP chairman Abdul Nasser Madani
and his wife Sufiya were part of the renewed investigation, they said.
The police are convinced that the Popular
Front of India had a lot of former SIMI workers in it as by the time of the
imposition of the ban on it they had seen the NDF as a forum for safe rehabilitation.
Despite this conviction, sources admitted, they had no specific information
to go all out against that organization, especially after it had transformed
into Popular Front in February last.
They also agreed that the ruling CPI(M)'s
electoral alliance with the PDP had posed several kinds of difficulties in
effectively probing the terror network. There were no standing instructions
from the Government against any sort of inquiries into the alleged links of
Madani with terror operatives but the alliance had worked as a psychological
hindrance for the police force.
Another difficulty was that the LDF-PDP relation
incapacitated them to move against the NDF as any attempt in that direction
would have been interpreted politically because that outfit was in alliance
with the Congress-led UDF. Moreover, there was no reason to act against the
NDF when arrested terrorists' statements and witness depositions were more
against the PDP than the NDF.
The sleuths of the Anti-Terror Squad had recently
questioned Madani and his wife Sufiya at their residence in Kochi on the basis
of the statements by Sarfaras Nawaz, who had arranged funds for the blasts
in the Indian cities last year, Abdul Sattar alias Sainuddeen, who had allegedly
manufactured the explosives for those blasts and others. Nawaz had told the
police in Kerala and Karnataka that he had met Madani at Kollam. However,
Madani had claimed that the investigators had no evidences against him.