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Journalism of Courage
With the Gujarat Police pinning last month8217;s serial blasts in the state on the banned Students Islamic Movement of India, THE SUNDAY EXPRESS profiles key SIMI members arrested over recent years and finds out what they have revealed in interrogations so far
Last year in Bhopal, the former general secretary of the banned Students Islamic Movement of India, the man often identified as one of the chief opponents of a softer political identity for SIMI, Safdar Hussain Nagori, now 40, met Raziuddin Nasir, a 21-year-old Hyderabad youth fed on hardline Islamist ideology.
One of the first questions Nagori, arrested in Indore in March this year, asked Nasir was how he could contribute to his efforts in reviving SIMI.
According to interrogation reports and statements given by Nasir, Nagori and the other alleged SIMI activists8212;all arrested between January 11 and March 27 this year8212;he told Nagori he could make bombs using hydrogen peroxide as an explosive.
The SIMI leader responded by saying he wanted guns. Nasir, according to his statement to the police, said he would have to go to Pakistan for that. Nagori, however, told Nasir he was not in favour of sourcing weapons from Pakistan.
There is still little hard evidence that Nagori or others in his core group of nearly 32 men from Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Kerala, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh and Jharkhand, ever did anything sinister other than conspire since they began meeting around the country through 2007.
For instance, on April 25, 2007, the thirtieth anniversary of the formation of SIMI, the group met at a carefully chosen location on the Karnataka-Goa border. The meeting8212;which was in line with the hardline SIMI ideology of creating a greater Islamic Caliphate, rejecting democracy, secularism and nationalism8212;decided to put into operation 8216;Khilafat and jihad8217;. Resolutions were made to continue the struggle for changing India from Dar-ul-Harab Abode of War to Dar-ul-Islam Land of Islam.
Last year, on December 8, 9 and 10, most members of this group met again. This time, at a place called Vagamon near Ernakulam, Kerala, for a hill and forest training camp. At this camp, there were about 40 participants, again from states where SIMI is active. According to police statements given by Shibly, one of the main organisers of this camp along with his brother Shaduly, trainees lived only on a diet of dried fruits to toughen them physically and mentally.
Meetings in 2007 were also held in Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and two other places in Karnataka. Nagori, Shibly, Toukir, Kamruddin, and Adnan were among the key participants.
The origin of this initiative to revive SIMI8212;that had the same core group along with Ehtesham Siddiqui, one of the key accused in the Mumbai train blasts case of July 20068212;is believed to lie in a meeting in Ujjain, held days ahead of the Mumbai blasts. The meeting was called by the hardline faction led by Nagori who didn8217;t invite moderates like Shahid Badr Falahi he was president of SIMI when the outfit was first banned in 2001.
A common strain running through the statements of key arrested SIMI leaders, like Shibly and Adnan, is the increasing tension between the Nagori group and the moderates. In July 2006, the two groups virtually parted ways, with the Nagori faction taking the path of jihad. The July 2006 meeting also decided to allow activists like Nagori and Kamruddin, who had crossed the 30-year age limit set for SIMI members, to continue as active members of the group.
The chance arrest of Raziuddin Nasir on January 11 this year at Honnali in Davangere district of Karnataka, while he was in the possession of a stolen motorcycle, first blew the lid off the clandestine activities of Nagori and his close associates.
The Corps of Detectives of the Karnataka police arrested 11 people who had taken part in the Karnataka meetings, including students of engineering, medicine and alternative medicine from Karnataka and a former software engineer from Kerala settled in Bangalore, Yahya Kammukutty, in February 2008.
Nagori, his brother Kamruddin, Shibly and his brother Shaduly, Adnan, Aamil Pervez a SIMI functionary from Jharkhand, Toukir, Shahbaz8212;all regarded as key ideology pushers, however, remained elusive.
On March 27, the Indore Police, acting on a tip-off, raided a house in the city and were reportedly taken aback by the presence of as many as 13 SIMI activists, including Shibly and Adnan. Two key members, Toukir and Shahbaz from UP, however, were not present in the house.
The meeting, sources said, was intended to regroup, analyse future action plans, rally legal support for those arrested in Karnataka and to find ways to shelter those who had not been arrested.
Evidence against most of the accused exists in the form of literature and propaganda material seized from the accused, including compact discs on gas cylinder bombs believed to have been sourced and distributed by one of the core group members yet to be arrested.
THE OUTFIT
SIMI was set up on April 25, 1977, by a group of Muslim students under the guidance of the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind. It comprised of students from UP, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Bihar and Rajasthan and was a consolidation of various student groups.
In the first 10 years of its existence, senior leaders from the Jamaat-e-Islami were the presidents of SIMI. Gradually, the group moved from being an organisation for Muslim students to a radical Islamic organisation resulting in the severance of ties with the JEI. Propagation of an Islamic Khilafat became the group8217;s core objective.
SIMI was at the forefront of protests over the Shahbano case in 1985.
Following the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992, it began expanding its influence over young Muslims and began establishing ties with extremist groups in Pakistan.
THE BAN
SIMI was banned first on September 27, 2001, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks in the United States. The ban has been extended thrice subsequently. The most recent ban came on February 8, 2008, but on August 5, 2008, a specially constituted tribunal under Section 4 of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, 1967, lifted the ban on SIMI. The tribunal, headed by a Delhi high court judge, Justice Gita Mittal, was required to examine a Central government notification dated February 7, 2008, for banning the outfit. But the tribunal said there was insufficient cause for declaring the association unlawful. The Centre then rushed to the Supreme Court, which acceded to its plea and stayed the tribunal8217;s order till further orders. To bolster their case, that is coming up for hearing on August 25, the government has already filed extensive 8220;additional information8221; just a few days ago.
OLD GROUP, NEW NAMES
Following the ban, SIMI has emerged under different names in states where it has always had a strong presence8212;UP, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu8212;and also in Karnataka and Jharkhand where it made its presence felt more recently.
In many parts of the country, SIMI has dropped the 8216;I8217;, and is calling itself only SIM. In Kerala, SIMI is believed to operate under 12 new fronts. Organisations like the National Democratic Front, for instance, are often described in security circles as new SIMI fronts in Kerala. In Tamil Nadu, the Manitha Neethi Pasarai MNP is sometimes identified as a new SIMI offshoot.
