Tags:
Journalism of Courage
NOT the Red Fort, not the Parliament, not even the Bombay Stock Exchange or the bustling markets. New India lives in its new economies, fuelled by technology and powered by highly prized scientists and computer nerds. Imbue them with the sense of insecurity, and India shakes.
A series of arrests of terror operatives across the country over the past few months has shown the new intent of terror groups. Symbols of economic progress in Bangalore and Hyderabad, the two tech cities, have hit the radar of terrorists as targets that will cause damage to the new economy of country and draw better attention to their position, say intelligence officials in both cities.
New targets call for new defences. That is why on January 3 this year the special investigation team of the Hyderabad police did something unconventional. They brought together the parents and siblings of three highly wanted terrorists and gave them a simple brief: use the national media to appeal to their sons and brothers to surrender.
8216;8216;Muslims in India are safe and happier than their fellow community members in Pakistan and Bangladesh. No one can take away my country8217;s prosperity,8217;8217; Ghulam Mustafa, a retired government schoolteacher ailing from cancer and father of Ghulam Yezdani, one of the most wanted terrorists in Hyderabad see box, told the media.
In a way the Hyderabad police, with three major events slotted in the city for January8212;the Indian Science Congress, Pravasi Divas and the AICC plenary8212;were highlighting the dangerous proportions extremism has assumed in Hyderabad.
|
With 40 of its population young, unemployed and Muslim, Hyderabad is a fertile nursery for terror. Bangalore, though, faces threats from the outside |
Slow Burn
ISLAMIC terrorism is not new to this old city. It began brewing in the aftermath of the Babri Masjid demolition and began rising to a crescendo in the post-September 11 and Gujarat scenario.
Beginning 1992, when an assistant superintendent of police was killed by terrorists linked to the Hizbul Mujahideen, the danger of terrorism has constantly lurked beneath Hyderabad8217;s secular fabric.
Engrossed in tackling the Naxal problem, Andhra Pradesh had not paid too much attention to the growing jihadi terror network, mostly in Hyderabad and the impoverished neighbouring Nalgonda and Karimnagar districts, the old Nizam8217;s area. Terror groups in Pakistan8212;including the Lashkar-e-Toiba8212;had for long made noises about the old Nizam8217;s area and Junagadh in Gujarat being the next battlefront8212;after Kashmir8212;to complete the 8216;8216;unfinished work of 19478217;8217;.
|
Islamic terrorism is not new to the old city. It began in the aftermath of the Babri Masjid demolition, but it acquired urgent overtones after the suicide attack on Dussehra-eve, 2005 |
The real wake-up call from among all the terror alarm bells ringing in Hyderabad, however, came on October 12, 2005, when a suicide bomber walked into the office of the Hyderabad police task force and detonated a pressure-activated bomb carried in a backpack.
Being Dussehra eve, the office, which normally sees at least 150 policemen across ranks in the evenings, was almost empty. One home guard on duty was killed and a second seriously injured, but the attack served to shake Hyderabad out of its complacency on the terrorism front. It was the first time a suicide bomb attack had been carried out in the City. Terrorism had been taken to the next level.
| nbsp; |
HYDERABAD8217;S MOST WANTED
|
|
Ghulam Yezdani alias Naveed: A native of Nalgonda, he is said to have graduated from being a Harkat-ul-Jehadi Islami operative in India to handling HUJI modules in South India from Bangladesh. Believed to have been trained in terror camps in Baluchistan. Police have evidence of his links to JeM operatives involved in the Hyderabad police task force blast. Has links also with Abdul Rehman, alleged LeT South India head arrested for the Bangalore IISc attack. Considered a key figure in the transportation of Hyderabadi youths to Bangladesh for training in arms and skills in Baluchistan. Story continues below this ad |
Sum of All Fears
THANKS to the investigations of the October 12 suicide bomb attack, the Hyderabad police now have a far better picture of the terrorist threat and its fresh focus on the new economy symbols in Hyderabad and Bangalore.
8216;8216;In two-three years we can achieve our objective with calculated acts of major violence,8217;8217; states the Hizbul Mujahideen8217;s recently re-arrested, Hyderabad operative Mujeeb Ahmad while calling for arms and funds for attacks in Hyderabad and Bangalore in CDs prepared for circulation in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
With nearly 40 per cent Muslim population8212;mostly youths, largely unemployed8212;the Hyderabad region has turned into a fertile nursery for terrorism.
8216;8216;Hyderabad has become a sort of comfort zone for terrorists. They seem to find sanctuary here,8217;8217; Andhra Pradesh director general of police Swaranjit Sen, said recently.
All Together Now
INVESTIGATIONS of the Hyderabad suicide bomb blast have revealed that terror groups are no longer working in isolation from each other; rather, they are collaborating.
8216;8216;Modules and groups are all academic here. On the ground they are working together,8217;8217; says a senior Hyderabad police officer.
In the Dussehra suicide bomb blast case, for instance, the police have detected the hands of the Jaish-e-Mohammed JeM, the Harkat-ul-Jehadi Islami HUJI and the Lashkar-e-Toiba LeT. Hyderabadi Muslim youth are being taken to terror training camps in Bangladesh and Baluchistan in Pakistan, say police sources. At least 500 such youths have undergone training in the two countries, they believe.
The HUJI8217;s Nafiq Vishwas and Hilaluddin, arrested in connection with the task force office blast in December 2005 have, for instance, revealed that they facilitated the travel of three JeM operatives8212;Motassim Billa, the Bangladeshi suicide-bomber, Kaleem alias Arsha,d and JeM local linchpin Shaheed8212;to Bangladesh for training and back.
| nbsp; |
terror timeline
|
|
January 2006: Hyderabad police arrest three JeM operatives Syed Haji, Shaujuddin and Shakeel Ahmed as part of the probe into the Dussehra 2005 attack on the Hyderabad police task force office, seize five bombs, including a 100-kg pressure-activated explosive. Their target: the Hyderabad police commissioner8217;s office, the police HQ and top IT companies. |
Outside Influence
BANGALORE, in comparison to Hyderabad, is under less terror stress: It is more the target of groups operating from places like Hyderabad than it is from inside the city.
But like Hyderabad, Bangalore got its wake-up call with the December 28 IISc attack by what is believed to be a LeT module. While the Karnataka capital, with its numerous scientific installations and technology companies, has been in the cross-eye of terrorists for a long time, the IISc attack is the first instance of terrorists with Pakistani affiliations striking in the city.
Prior to December 28, it was the Andhra Pradesh-based Deendar-e-Anjuman group that had carried out the biggest act of terror in Bangalore. One in a series of blasts in churches across Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh occurred at Bangalore8217;s St Peter8217;s Church on June 9, 2000.
8216;8216;There8217;s this belief that Bangalore is a safe place even among the police. With several terror alerts in recent times not resulting in actual arrests or incidents, a complacency has crept in,8217;8217; admits a senior intelligence official in Karnataka.
Future Tense
THE earliest warning of Pakistan-based groups targeting Bangalore8217;s booming IT-driven economy came with the arrest of JeM operative Mohammed Arif alias Ashfaq for the Parliament attack.
Ashfaq told investigators that a terror module had been preparing to attack the homes of Wipro chairman Azim Premji and Infosys chief mentor N R Narayana Murthy. Based on alerts issued following this, Premji and Murthy were provided security by the state police.
Intelligence inputs have also been received of Bangalore featuring in the LeT8217;s terror plans in 2002, with a key operative of the group establishing links with an undercover LeT operative in the city.
More recently, in March 2005, the Delhi police, who captured two LeT terrorists following an encounter, warned the Bangalore police that the LeT had surveyed key places in Bangalore. Putting up at a mosque in the Shivajinagar area, the operatives had surveyed the Infosys campus and the M G Road area during a two-day visit.
In May, following the capture of a Lashkar man who had planted himself in the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited8217;s Kanpur factory, key aviation and defence installations in Bangalore went on the alert.
A key part of the investigations of the IISc attack is focused on finding local terror operatives who may have planted themselves in the city in the guise of employees of companies or as students.
Lessons from Hyderabad are aplenty. The intelligence network, in particular, is constantly on its toes in Hyderabad, alert to IB warnings and maintaining constant vigil. Bangalore will need to do the same.
Fringe Benefits
The IISc attack ended the lull that followed the Coimbatore blasts of 1998. Tamil Nadu and Kerala, in the deep south, are now beginning to get anxious
CHENNAI/KOCHI THE serial blasts that shook Coimbatore on February 14, 1998, was south India8217;s first brush with terror. Suicide squads of Tamil Nadu8217;s first big terrorist group, Al Umma, set off a series of bombs, minutes before BJP leader L K Advani, was to address an election rally, killing 60.
The state government moved swiftly, imposing a ban on two suspected groups8212;Al Umma and the All India Al Jihad Committee. Al Umma founder Basha, his key associate Mohammed Ansari, Abdul Nasser 8216;Maudany,8217; founder of the Kerala-based People Democratic Party, and other activists belonging to the Al Umma and Jihad Committee, were among the 167 accused in the blast case.
Maudany launched his Islamic Sevak Sangh later banned and reborn as the People Democratic Party as an answer to the RSS. Incidentally, the growth of the ISS in Kerala was associated with a period of communal tension in the state.
And now the terror strike in neighbouring Bangalore has brought old fears back to the state. The Kerala government is mulling a proposal to comprehensively review terror attack threat vulnerabilities and reassess the state8217;s mechanisms.
8216;8216;We have already had some discussions on it at the top level, but it could be sometime before there could be a policy document or directives,8217;8217; say officials of the home ministry.
The state is yet to experience a full-fledged terror strike, though it8217;s accustomed to sporadic extremist violence. Incendiary stuff, including high explosives and IEDs, keep surfacing. This past week saw a haul of dozens of gelatine sticks from a bus stand cloakroom in Kozhikode; this variety was used a couple of months ago to blow up a fishing boat in Marad, a few km away.
Intelligence sources, however, say they don8217;t have a specific terror threat perception. Not everyone shares that optimism though. P Vijayan, Kochi8217;s police commissioner, for instance, says that though he doesn8217;t knows of a specific threat to the city yet, Kochi is highly vulnerable to terror. 8216;8216;We have a port that with heavy sea traffic and a long and open coastline. There are so many industries that could be soft terror targets too,8217;8217; he points out.
With a large floating population, Kochi, which hosts the southern Naval Command and the Naval Armament depot is now going the IT way. An ambitious hub, the Smart City is set to come up soon. All this, till recently a cause for celebration, has now become a cause for concern.
Vijayan has just completed protracted discussions with almost all vulnerable industries in the city, and says he is about to draw up an assessment report on how vulnerable they are and what could be done.
Top police brass in the capital, Thiruvanantapuram, have also begun the security assessment exercise.
Things are not much different in Chennai. Immediately after the Bangalore attack, a security cordon was thrown across crucial locations in the city and armed police posted at Chennai8217;s IT hub8212;the multi-storeyed TIDEL Park buildings, the sprawling 500-acre IIT campus and the Anna University and Central Leather Research Institute located across the road, the crowded shopping mall Spencer Plaza, and the Chennai Mofussil Bus Terminus at Koyambedu.
Tamil Nadu8217;s claims to peace now appear shaky. Till recently it was happy in its belief that the Al Umma had virtually wound up with its top leaders in prison. But just a week ago, with the e-mail bomb threat to Parliament being traced to a cybercafe in Palayamkottai, the old fears returned.
