NEW DELHI: Indian Mujahideen, Pakistani terror outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba's proxy in India, may have been down after the August 2012 Pune serial blasts but it's certainly not out as it has the capacity to regroup after every clampdown. The Hyderabad incident has once again proved that the banned group is not only alive but also kicking through its potent sleeper cells in different states.
Getting continuous support from the Pakistani spy agency ISI, the outfit has enough resources to make its presence felt at regular intervals through attacks in different cities. Its supply lines of explosives, detonators and micro chips are intact and it can attack anywhere in the country with as much ease as it did during its peak in 2007-08 when it carried out blasts in Lucknow, Faizabad, Varanasi, Jaipur, Ahmedabad and Delhi.
A Delhi Police dossier, prepared after last year's Pune blasts and shared with the home ministry in September, shows that the terror outfit has modules in Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kerala and Delhi where it recruited cadre during the lull of 2009. It came to action again in 2010 when it attacked German Bakery in Pune and carried out a shootout and blast outside Jama Masjid in Delhi.
The dossier, shared with all states, says the IM's top leaders - Amir Raza Khan and Bhatkal brothers (Iqbal and Riyaz) - are currently in Pakistan while others have safe hideouts in Saudi Arabia, Nepal and the UAE (Dubai and Sharjah). Khan and the Bhatkal brothers were among the founding members of the outfit which later took in its fold almost all the cadres of Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI).
The dossier says that IM - which was set up by ISI to camouflage its own footprint and project to the world that Islamic terrorism in India was indigenous in character and content - has "substantial corpus of money", having funding sources based in Kuwait, Riyadh, Chicago and different cities in Pakistan.
Even though a number of operatives were arrested in 2011-12 by Delhi, Maharashtra and Gujarat police, 15 key absconders - Yasin Bhatkal, Shahnawaz, Abu Rashid, Abdus Subham Qureshi, Tehsin and Mirza Shadab Bai among them - have been carrying out operations under the guidance of their bosses in Pakistan.
Calling IM a "start to finish jihad factory", the dossier highlighted that "innocuous religious platforms" like Quran Foundation, Pune and Islamic Guidance Centre, Mangalore were among institutions from where foot soldiers were recruited, which included disenchanted Muslim youth ranging from petty criminals to highly paid software professionals. It noted how the outfit had recruited its prized operative -- Mansoor Ali Mohammed Peerbhoy -- while he was studying Arabic at the Quran Foundation.
Peerbhoy, a Yahoo techie-turned-media chief of the terror outfit who was arrested in 2008, had brought in a number of educated youth to the IM's fold. Recruitments of Arif Badar, IED assembly and micro chip-based timer expert, and Mobin, internet hacking expert, were testimony of how talented ones were identified and trained as terrorists through fiery and emotive 'taqrirs' (speech) and attitude hardening 'dars' (lessons).
It was noted that "brainwashing through doctored pictorials and videos, such as that of Godhra and Babri Masjid incidents" was very common in these 'taqrirs' and 'dars'.
Use of 'social networking sites' for sending personalized messages and motivating vulnerable youth had also come to the notice of investigating agencies, prompting them to suggest setting up "massive and sophisticated surveillance infrastructure" in the country.
Though the IM came to notice for the first time when it sent emails to media houses before the serial blasts in Faizabad, Lucknow and Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh in November 2007, its genesis - the dossier says - goes back to the year 2000 when the underworld network was roped in to organize talent spotting, motivation and training of Indian youth at the facilities of LeT and ISI.
Indian Mujahideen shows yet again that it is alive and kicking
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Indian Mujahideen shows yet again that it is alive and kicking
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Indian Mujahideen shows yet again that it is alive and kicking
