Held in Canada for Mumbai blasts, one of the most radical faces of SIMI: Who is C A M Basheer?

The notice issued by Interpol lists his offences as “murder, attempt to commit murder, conspiracy, damaging public property by using explosives, possession of prohibited arms and committing a terrorist act”.

Born in 1961 as the youngest son of the late Chaneparambil Abdulkhadar and Beeyathu, Basheer, who holds a diploma in aeronautical engineering, rose to SIMI’s leadership position from Aluva, a town near his village of Kaprassery, where the organisation had a strong base before its ban in 2001. As he scaled SIMI’s organisational ladder, he went on to become its all-India president in the late 1980s.

That was the time when radical elements had started gaining strength within SIMI, leading to its parent body, the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind (JIH), gradually distancing itself from the organisation. Basheer was said to be among the leading figures of the radical stream in SIMI. Many within SIMI were egged on by the Afghan-Soviet war of the early 80s to propagate the idea of violent jihad.

While Basheer’s recent detention in Canada is over his alleged role in the 2002-03 serial blast cases, he has had several other encounters with the law.

As head of SIMI in the 1980s, Basheer allegedly indoctrinated Muslim youth. Court documents of the trial in the 2002-03 blasts case state that in 1991, during a SIMI convention held at Bandra Reclamation, Basheer delivered a provocative speech on the subject of “atrocities on Kashmiri Muslims”. According to police records, the convention saw the attendance of various radicals from countries such as “Bangladesh, Iran and Palestine”. He went underground in mid-1992 and subsequently fled the country.

Former associates of Basheer say that in the mid-80s, Basheer, along with a few radical elements within SIMI, went to Pakistan, where they were trained in the North West Frontier province adjoining Afghanistan. Some members of the group are also supposed to have crossed over to Afghanistan and held meetings with men like Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, the Afghan warlord who is widely believed to have invited Osama Bin Laden to Afghanistan.

Court records say Basheer was asked by the Inter Services Intelligence’s (ISI) to send more recruits to Pakistan but his former associates say he didn’t manage to convince too many to do so.

The Indian government had named Basheer as being part of the ISI’s K2, an ambitious plan to create a common pan-India infrastructure for Khalistan and Kashmir radicals in the country. Basheer’s brief was to allegedly hire safehouses where these radicals could hide out and store weapon caches smuggled across the Gujarat border.

In mid-1992, two men, one a close associate of Basheer, Saquib Nachan, and Lal Singh, a Khalistani terrorist, were arrested for allegedly harbouring Khalistani terrorists. They were later sentenced to life imprisonment by a Terrorism and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) court in Gujarat. Basheer was named as an absconder in the case.

In 2011, Basheer’s name was on the list of India’s 50 most wanted criminals who were alleged to be hiding in Pakistan.

Now 62, Basheer has over the last decade largely maintained a low-profile, yet he always stayed on the intelligence radar.

Security agencies suspected that he was operating from the Middle East and that he allegedly funded terror activities of the SIMI and Indian Mujahideen. Basheer was allegedly the handler of several other radical elements, including Sarfaraz Nawaz, a SIMI leader from Kerala who was allegedly involved in several terror cases. Nawaz was detained in Oman in 2009 and was deported to India over his alleged involvement in the 2008 Bengaluru blast case.

A family source in Basheer’s village said they only had a distant memory of Basheer. “After completing his diploma in aeronautical engineering, he went to Bengaluru for training. Since then, he had not been in touch with the family. He has probably not come home in three decades,’’ he said.

The source said even after going into hiding, Basheer would stay in touch with his family in Kaprassery, occasionally calling them on phone, yet never revealing his whereabouts. The last time he called the family was around 1999 or 2000, the source said.

Until around 10 to 15 years ago, security agencies would frequent the village looking for Basheer. “Everyone had forgotten him, and now comes news of his detention in Canada,” the source said.

The 2002-2003 Mumbai blasts case, for which Basheer had a RCN notice to his name, involved a series of explosions that took place between December 2002 and March 2003. The blasts had led to the arrest of 16 persons, with Basheer being named of the five absconding conspirators in the case.

On December 6, 2002, an explosion had taken place in the main lobby area of Mumbai Central railway station. Over a month later, on January 27, 2003, another blast took place at a market in the western suburbs of Vile Parle. The third blast took place on March 13, 2003, in a compartment of a local train at Mulund. Twelve persons lost their lives in these blasts. Police had invoked the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) and arrested 13 persons. Bashir was named a ‘wanted accused’, with police claiming that his role was to provide funds for the conspiracy.

Earlier this week, the Mumbai Police approached a special court in the city to seek permission for a DNA test to confirm Basheer’s identity to the Canadian authorities. The court has permitted the police to take blood samples of Basheer’s Ernakulam-based sister.

With Sadaf Modak & Mohamed Thaver, Mumbai