Suspect No.1

Muzamil Jaleel traces the evolution of a cadre-based group into the chief architect of terror in India

SECURITY agencies estimate that 8216;8216;80 per cent of all terror activities in India today8217;8217; have Lashkar8217;s fingerprints. And one reason why it has been able to recruit local residents outside Jammu and Kashmir could be the manner in which it used communal riots to tap into discontented youths.

Sources reveal that the Lashkar8217;s two top men in India8212;Azam Ghauri and Abdul Karim Tunda8212;first came together in the mid-8217;80s to form Islahul Muslimeen Reform among Muslims only to fight on behalf of Muslims during a riot especially because of the 8216;8216;earlier experience of partisan role of the police8217;8217;. Interestingly, the group started out by imparting RSS-style training, in the hope of building a cadre-based group.

Soon after the demolition of the Babri Masjid, Islahul Muslimeen started planning violent reprisals and, a year later, detonated dozens of bombs in Mumbai and Ghauri8217;s home town Hyderabad.

In 1994, Jalees Ansari8212;a Mumbai doctor who became a close associate of Ghauri and Tunda8212;was arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation on grounds that he was conspiring to detonate a series of bombs across the country. The network was exposed but Tunda and Ghauri escaped the security net.

This is the time, security agencies believe, that this group of angry Muslim men started thinking of setting up a terror network. Ghauri, it is learnt, remained in India but Tunda crossed over to Dhaka and then joined Lashkar.

Security agencies believe that Ghauri, meanwhile, set up the network in Andhra Pradesh, especially Hyderabad. In fact, Hyderabad and Junagadh have always been focus areas for Lashkar, which thinks the annexation of the two regions through a police action in 1947 into Indian Union to be an aberration of the Partition; Hyderabad is also said to be the ancestral home of Lashkar founder Hafiz Mohammed Sayeed.

Ghauri was killed in an encounter in Karimnagar on April, 6, 2000. If the person picked up in Kenya on Friday is definitively identified as Tunda, it would bring to an end the group that started out as a 8216;8216;defence force8217;8217; for Muslims during communal riots launched in 1985.

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Security agencies believe that the anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat and the subsequent feeling of insecurity among Muslims were fodder for Lashkar8217;s expansion plans across India. In fact, the anger among Muslim populations, especially the youth, created an atmosphere conducive to fresh recruitment.

Some indication of this came when the Gujarat Police claimed to have killed Pune8217;s Javed Sheikh and Mumbai college student Ishrat Jehan Raza and two Pakistani nationals in a mysterious encounter on June 15, 2004. Although there was no conclusive evidence behind Raza8217;s involvement with the militant group, her diary certainly provides a glimpse of her anger against the VHP and BJP leadership in Gujarat.

Recently, a group of militants, including a Shopian youth, were killed in Ahmedabad where they had rented an apartment. Security agencies believe that this group had plans to set up cells in Gujarat and their recruitment strategy was to make revenge as the motivation.

Although the government agencies suspect Lashkar8217;s hand in the recent Mumbai blasts, the group has issued a strong denial saying they have nothing to do with it. In fact, a recent article 8216;Why blasts in India?8217;, published in Jamat-e-Dawa8217;s web magazine Gazwah, attacks India8217;s secular credentials and justifies 8216;8216;Muslim anger8217;8217;, arguing that the community is increasingly getting alienated and disenchanted.