Author: Kamran Khan
Publication: The Jang
Date: August 28, 2003
URL: http://www.jang.com.pk/thenews/aug2003-daily/28-08-2003/main/main8.htm
Introduction: Long list of suspects
confuses Mumbai blast investigators
The twin bombings in India's business
capital of Mumbai on Monday basically symbolised an organised militant
response from Indian Muslim groups which now seem determined to battle
the rise of Hindu fundamentalism in India and avenge the 1993 and 2002
massacres of Muslims in Mumbai and Gujarat, respectively, according to
security affairs experts in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh.
In many media interviews since the
recent bombings, Indian intelligence and police officials have also confirmed
that several militant Muslim groups in India - not linked to Kashmiri guerrillas
- have successfully armed and trained their cadres to launch retaliatory
terrorist strikes in major Indian cities.
Before the blasts that rocked Mumbai,
five separate cases of bomb explosions were reported in the city, killing
at least 15 people since December 2002. Most of these blasts occurred in
buses, local trains and at railway stations.
Thoroughly confused after the twin
bombings, which had left at least 58 people killed at the Gateway of India
and at the Zaveri Bazaar in the downtown, Mumbai police, the home ministry
and intelligence services have so far listed 10 Indian Muslim groups suspecting
their involvement in bombings.
While India's deputy prime minister
believes that Pakistan based Lashkar-e-Taiba was behind the twin bombings,
Maharashtra deputy chief minister Chhagan Bhujbal believes that disgruntled
Muslim youth from Gujarat caused the incident. Indian intelligence bureau
officials in Mumbai think that a newly formed militant Indian Muslim group
Lashkar- e-Khaledeen was responsible, Mumbai police charge Jaish-e-Muhammad,
while the intelligence bureau in Kolkata thinks that an ISI man in Dhaka
was the organiser.
Lashkar-e-Khaledeen, with a membership
of some 400 fanatic Indian Muslim youth, is devoted to combat the Hinduvta
on Indian soil. It says that Lashkar members would fight the covert Indian
state-sponsored terrorism against Muslims with overt anti-Hinduvta terrorism.
India's home ministry and Mumbai
police's crime branch have strong suspicion that Students Islamic Movement
of India (SIMI) was responsible. Some officials in RAW have cited the involvement
of an unidentified Gulf-country based Darul Lashkar in the blasts, but
Mumbai police officials believe that it could be the work of Dawood Ibrahim
group, while some elements in the India home ministry have speculated the
involvement of an ultra-radical Muradabad-based Gobra faction of Ahle Hadees
sect.
The SIMI, now considered a hot suspect
in Mumbai blasts, is dedicated to the 'liberation of India' by converting
it to an Islamic land. The SIMI, an organisation of young fanatical students,
has declared Jehad against India.
The SIMI, banned by the Indian government
in 2001, has a membership of about 30,000 Indian Muslim students.
Accused by the Indian government
of allegedly causing scores of cases of terrorism all across India, the
SIMI was headed Dr Shahid Badar Falah while Safdar Nagori served as the
secretary-general till the organisation was banned.
The Delhi police arrested Falah
on September 28, 2001 and he has subsequently been charged with sedition
and inciting communal disharmony in Uttar Pradesh.
The underground Lashkar-e-Khaledeen
and SIMI members in secret messages to renowned Muslim militant groups
early this year had sounded that the ruling BJP in India was on course
to "systemic annihilation of Muslims ".
These organisations, recalling the
Muslim carnage in Gujarat and Mumbai, said the BJP has allowed Hindu terrorist
training camps at various sites on mainland India.
Under the patronage of Indian military
and RAW the fundamentalist Hindu groups such as Bajrang Dal, Sangh Parivar,
RSS, Durga Vahini, Shiv Sena, Hinduvta Unity, Hinduvta Brotherhood, Soldiers
of Hinduvta, Saffron Tigers and Hindu Jagran Manch are operating terrorist
training camps, said an e-mail communication from SIMI in June this year.
Notwithstanding the ever confusing
list of suspects that only confirms the existence of a large number of
militant groups in India, most Indian security officials and some senior
politicians agree that the twin bombings was an expected outcome of last
year's carnage of Muslims in Gujarat.
"No doubt" the blasts at Zaveri
Bazaar and in front of the Gateway of India were linked to the Gujarat
riots, said Maharashtra deputy chief minister Chhagan Bhujbal in an interview.
Bhujbal was referring to the fact that Gujarati businessmen dominate the
jewellery hub of Zaveri Bazaar, the target of the first blast that killed
at least 9 Hindu businessmen from Gujarat state.
Reinforcing Bhujbal's assertion,
Gujarat director-general of police K Chakravarty revealed in an interview
on Tuesday that a post-riot probe by India's Central Bureau of Investigation
(CBI) into Gujarat incident had found that at least 500 Muslim youth from
the state had abandoned their homes to avenge the massacre of their loved
ones by Hindu fundamentalists. Indian officials said that most of those
500 youth joined either the SIMI or Lashkar-e-Khaledeen cadres.
In media reports Indian officials
named a prominent Gulf country for providing financial support to the Indian
militant groups. They also alleged that the same country provided secret
location for the guerrilla training of the Muslim youth from Gujarat, desperate
to fight state- sponsored anti-Muslim wave in India.
"It is immature on part of several
politicians also to dump the Mumbai bombings on the ISI," says KP Narayanan,
former head of India's Intelligence Bureau in an interview from Madras.
Narayanan said in the aftermath
of Gujarat tragedy, India has enough of home-grown terrorists and the union's
future was threatened by the indigenous groups.
Former Indian I B chief Narayanan
is joined by his fellow Indian security officials, besides many Pakistani
and other security officials in the region, who thought that the massacre
of Muslims in Gujarat last year and similar carnage of Muslims in Mumbai
in 1993 have given birth to most militant groups of Indian Muslims, whose
sole aim is to battle the Hinduvta in their country.
An independent group of reputed
Indian observers headed by former Indian naval chief L Ramdas, which had
a tour of Gujarat after last year's violence, had reported to Indian Prime
Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee that "genocide" of Muslims took place in
Gujarat. They reported: "5,000 Muslims killed, 50,000 made homeless, hundreds
of mosques, and dozens of hotels, shops, and villages destroyed during
riots in the Indian province of Gujarat."
The panel also reported: "Hindu
extremists, armed with swords and rifles, are reported to have exploded
houses and mosques with LPG and oxygen cylinders, and to have been supplied
with trucks loaded with gasoline and gas cylinders. They are also reported
to have been paid Rs 500 ($12.50) per day, and provided food, water, wine,
and medical aid. If arrested, their legal expenses were to be covered by
the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, and if they were killed, it is reported, their
families would be given Rs 200,000 ($5,000)."
Based on "actual field surveys and
counts in the State of Gujarat", Indian naval chief Ramdas also reported
to Prime Minister Vajpayee: "72 Muslims burned inside their homes in Gulmarg
society, 29 Muslims killed in Mehsana village, 46 killed and burned in
a truck on Lunawada highway, 18 Muslims burned in the "Best Bakery" in
Baroda, 350 Muslim dead, thrown into a well near Naroda Patiya, young girls
and women molested and raped before being burnt."
Reporting on the destruction of
holy Muslim places in Gujarat, the Ramdas panel told the Indian prime minister:
"Mosques destroyed: 12 in Baroda, 10 in Ahmedabad, all in the villages
affected by riots, and several converted into Hindu temples."
Identical anti-Muslim riots that
had taken place in Mumbai in December 1992 and January 1993 had left thousands
of Muslims killed, tens of thousands of them homeless, their businesses
ransacked and their women molested.
The anti-Muslim rioting in Mumbai
was followed by serial bomb blasts that caused death of more than 200 people
in India's business capital.
Supreme Court Judge Justice BN Srikrishna,
who was appointed by the Indian government to probe the Mumbai riots, had
reported that under the patronage of Mumbai police and state politicians
at least 1,500 Muslims were killed, 1,829 injured and 165 are still missing
in the gruesome riots of December 1992, and January 1993 in Mumbai.
South Asian security officials noted
that Indian government's indifference to its own reports that had cited
the involvement of officials and ruling politicians in the killings of
Muslims and destruction of their properties in Mumbai and Gujarat has principally
contributed to the widening gulf between the Muslims and Hindus in India.
During a session of Indian parliament
held just after the Gujarat riots last year, Satyavrat Chaturvedi, a member
of parliament from the Congress party, had shown remarkable vision by predicting:
"Today, Gujarat is burning; tomorrow, the country will burn."
