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As a result, the law enforcers are finding it difficult to track down these suspects. The police believe that the recent blasts were executed by SIMI activists at the instance of Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT). Thursday's blast in a local train at Mulund killed 12 people.
SIMI's hand is also suspected in the blast in a BEST bus at Ghatkopar, which killed two persons, and two other blasts at Mumbai Central and Vile Parle subsequently.
Police sources claimed that the culprits have links with the banned People's War Group which is active in the Naxal-dominated areas of Andhra Pradesh, Nanded and Parbhani districts of Maharashtra.
Officials insist that SIMI had established links with Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the radical Karachi-based Jamat-e-Islami group. It is also in regular touch with various fundamentalist organisations in the Gulf and Pak-occupied Kashmir. LeT is one of these organisations.
Officials further said that the blasts were meticulously planned, but the strikes could have been bigger. “We suspect that they are deliberately limiting the extent of damage. The aim seems to be to create a fear psychosis,” a senior official said.
Intelligence officials said after SIMI was banned in September 2001 in the wake of Al Qaida's terror attacks bi the US, its activists floated a new set-up. However, apparently to avoid a fresh ban, the new organisation only talks about its aim to motivate the Muslim youth for educational and cultural upliftment of the community.
Sources said that the new organisation does not mention SIMI or talk about Islamic fundamentalism. “In fact, we cannot officially declare the new organization to be the new avatar of SIMI, because it does not give a hint about SIMI and other fundamentalist activities or links. But the organization is under surveillance and being monitored,” the official said.
Interestingly, the new organization is officially doing what SIMI used to do until the late 1980s. It is only with the rise of pan-Islamisation that it shed its role as a religious educator and took Part in jehadi activities.
SIMI was formed in Aligarh on April 25, 1977, by Mohammad Ahmadullah Siddiqi, who had been a professor of journalism and public relations at Illinois University, US.
Although, SIMI emerged out of the
rabidly communal Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, it continued to focus on the educational
and cultural uplift of Muslim youth until the late 1980s, the officer said.
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