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Islamic militant gets hero's burial in southern India

Islamic militant gets hero's burial in southern India

Author:
Publication: The Jang
Date: October 2, 2002
URL: http://jang.com.pk/thenews/oct2002-daily/02-10-2002/world/w11.htm

A Muslim militant shot by police  commandos was given a hero's burial Tuesday by weeping relatives and admirers in the southern Indian city of Madurai, witnesses said.

Imam Ali, the key accused in the 1993 bombing of an office of the rightwing Hindu group Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS, National Volunteers Corp), was killed along with four other people during a police raid on their hideout in the southern city of Bangalore on Sunday.

Ali, 32, whose body was brought for burial to a mosque in Madurai, 400 kilometres (248 miles) south of Madras, was also accused of plotting to assassinate Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani and other Hindu leaders and bomb temples in southern India.

The city police had billed Ali as the most-wanted Muslim militant in Tamil Nadu state. A crowd of admirers and mourners, mostly local Muslims and relatives from Ali's nearby hometown of Melur, chanted prayers, wept and shouted anti-police slogans as the slain militant's bullet-ridden body arrived for burial.

They hoisted black flags on rooftops in the Muslim neighbourhood of Sungampa in Madurai, and insulted policemen guarding the burial site, witnesses said. The crowd mobbed two ambulances which brought the bodies of all five militants to the mosque and during the Islamic burial blocked journalists or policemen from entering. A senior police official said he was surprised by the show of solidarity for Ali who had carried a reward of 500,000 rupees (10,400 dollars) on his head.

The relatives had initially refused to take possession of the bodies and were so embarrassed that they covered their faces when they went to Bangalore to identify the dead, a senior official said.

The police said Ali had links with Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence secret service and had received training in Kashmir from the Hizbul Mujahedin militant group as well as in Bangladesh. Along with another militant, Ali had escaped from police custody near Madurai on March 7 this year.
 


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