Last chapter missing

One cannot vouch for either the police or the politicians but it is in India8217;s long term security interests that the law enforcement agencies reopen the serial blast investigations since 2005 in light of the new evidence on SIMI, Indian Mujahideen and their foreign masters with corroboration on ground. The revelations since the arrest of Abu Bashir call for rearrangement of the Indian terror puzzle, they don8217;t fit the last pieces into a tricky jigsaw. Otherwise, political exigency and the convenience of the law enforcement agencies will result in the big picture never emerging, and the overall threat remaining over India.

Delhi Police now says that Lashkar-e-Toiba LeT commander Abu Al Qama is the head of Indian Mujahideen and in effect, responsible for the latest Delhi blasts. Even at the cost of being labelled cynical, the police is simply killing two birds with one stone as the main accused of the 2005 Delhi blasts Tariq Ahmed Dar has been chargesheeted of the basis of his call to the satellite phone of Al Qama, who is under the overall guidance of LeT8217;s chief operational commander Zaki-ur Rehman Lakhvi. So by introducing Al Qama into the picture, the Delhi Police has sorted out both the blasts, though security agencies know that Dar, a former LeT spokesman, wanted to extract money from Al Qama by boasting about the Delhi strike. The same is the case with Mumbai police, which has painted itself into a corner today by saying that Ameer Raza Khan, brother of killed Asif Raza Khan, was the kingpin behind the Mumbai train blasts and that the five arrested on Wednesday posed as Pakistani bombers.

Ahmedabad blasts accused and SIMI ranking leader Sajjid Mansuri not only identified Afzal Mutalib Usmani, arrested on Wednesday, as the man who got the stolen cars to Ahmedabad, but also said that he was one of the train bombers. He said that he replaced a polytechnic lecturer in Mumbai as the bomber when the latter chickened out.

The fact is that rather than going into meticulous and methodical terror investigations, the police is desperate to can the cases even though the name of Ameer Raza Khan opens another deadly can of worms. The now incarcerated HUJI commander Babu Bhai, arrested by UP STF on June 23, 2007, after the encounter of Asif Raza Khan in Gujarat in 2001 worked with brother Ameer and was involved in the kidnapping of Partho Burman of Khadim shoes in Kolkata. The four crore rupee ransom, according to Babu Bhai, was shared by Aftab Ansari and was even sent to Omar Sayeed Sheikh in Pakistan. So does this mean that the serial blasts in India are linked with forces that operate with Al Qaida, or those who were part of the 9/11 conspiracy ? Did Delhi Police or Mumbai Police ever interrogate Babu Bhai to find out about Ameer Raza as the former sent 23 UP youth for subversive training in Pakistan through HUJI8217;s Asadullah in Bangladesh? Why did the UP police not uncover all the Babu Bhai8217;s links? Some of them were in Azamgarh.

For the record, the same Asadullah had links with the Hyderabad group of Shahid Bilal,who in turn was in touch with Ameer Raza Khan and Rasool Party, part of the Gujarat module and involved in Haren Pandya murder. Rather than crow about their achievements and confuse the average Indian, the Indian police and intelligence agencies need to go back to the drawing board. Perhaps, all those arrested this month are mere foot-soldiers with their bosses sitting across the Line of Control. It is evident that there is someone who is using pan-Islamic jehadi groups like HUJI, LeT and Jaish e Mohammed to target India through local modules.

The need of the hour is to find the financial channels of these local modules, as well as unearth the bombmakers who are equipped with cheap but effective IED technology. One need not identify that someone, as every Indian policeman and intelligence agent is well-versed with the name and have used it time to time. Besides the objective of targetting a secular India, the modules also are out to spread their version of radical Islam.

The arrested SIMI leaders told their interrogators that they believed in Ahl-e-Hadees version of Islam, opposed to Sufism or any other sect. For them the ultimate is the Book. Instead of capping the investigations in haste, the police and in this case the CBI should look into the spread of the radical Islam movement that is fed on the Gujarat riot fears and Babri Masjid demolition. Perhaps, the clues to the bombings of Barelwi mosque in Malegaon in September 2006, Ajmer Dargah and even Makkah Masjid are buried in this militant debris. For the police, the game has just begun.

shishir.guptaexpressindia.com