Confessions of the Indian Mujahideen formed to fight for Muslim cause in India

Confessions of the Indian Mujahideen 
Vignesh Iyer and Presley Thomas, Hindustan Times
April 11, 2009
Laying the foundation

The Indian Mujahideen (IM), the little-known terror outfit that cropped up mysteriously and kept investigating agencies on tenterhooks, is an offshoot of the Asif Raza Commando Force (ARCF) that carried out the shootout at the US Consulate in Kolkata in 2002.

The ARCF was formed in 2001 by gangsters-turned-terrorists Aftab Ansari and Amir Raza Khan, brother of Asif Raza. The organisation didn’t last long after the Kolkata Police arrested most of its operatives after the attack. Khan fled to Dubai, where he met Ansari again. The two then roped in Riyaz Bhatkal, Iqbal Bhatkal and Mohammed Sadiq Israr Sheikh — a Class 11 dropout from Mumbai — to form the IM. Sadiq was indoctrinated and trained in Pakistani terrorist training camps at Khan’s behest.

Recruitment process

In 2003, when Sadiq got back to India, he met old friend Arif Badruddin Sheikh. Sadiq had asked Arif to scout for youngsters to fight for the Muslim cause in India. Arif got Sadiq in touch with several youth who were all sent to Pakistan for training. When they got back, there were more waiting to go. Through the fresh recruits, Sadiq got in touch with more youth. All this while, the Bhatkal brothers were busy recruiting in the south. Khan took care of the expenses, sending money through Western Union Money Transfer.

Terror planning

With the training underway, Khan wanted results. He sent a message to Sadiq and the gang got busy. With the help of key men like Riyaz and Arif, they planned blasts in Delhi, the Sankatmochan temple in Varanasi, Shramjeevi Express and Mumbai trains. Over the next few years, bombs went off in Gorakhpur, Hyderabad, Uttar Pradesh, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Surat and Delhi.

In August 2007, the IM first plotted last year’s deadly Delhi and Gujarat blasts. Explosives were collected in Mumbai and taken to Delhi. The plan for the blasts in Gujarat was formulated by Riyaz, Sadiq and one Aatif Sheikh in Mumbai in June 2008. Teams were divided — Aatif was assigned Ahmedabad, Riyaz Surat.

Executing innocents

In September 2005, when Arif returned from Pakistan, Sadiq asked him to make timers. Arif’s first attempt to make a working timer using an alarm clock of the Ajanta Company failed, so he used a Samay clock — the results of which were successful. Arif made six bombs and gave them to Sadiq. These were later used in the Sarojini Nagar and Lajpat Nagar blasts in Delhi in October 2005.

Arif got several such instructions and he delivered on all of them. His bombs were used in Jaipur, Bangalore, Ahmedabad and UP courts; the bombs found across Surat the day after the Ahmedabad bombings were his handiwork too.

Fear phychosis

The IM also made use of a psychological weapon — the threat e-mail. And more than the blasts, what terrorized people was the dreaded e-mail that tormented both citizens and law enforcement agencies alike. Mohammed Mansoor Asghar Peerbhoy, a 31-year-old software engineer with Yahoo, turned out to be the face behind the e-mails. Spotted by IM operatives Asif Sheikh and Anique Sayyed at Quran Foundation classes in Pune, where Peerbhoy was learning Arabic, he was doctored by the Bhatkal brothers. As bombs went off in Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Delhi last, Peerbhoy mocked one and all, including the intelligence bureau that he nicknamed the “ignorance” bureau. He signed off with an arrogant “stop it if you can”.

Why Varun and why not Geelani?

Why Varun and why not Geelani?

T V R Shenoy
April 01, 2009

In August 2008, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, the Hurriyat Conference leader from Jammu & Kashmir, gave an interview that has not received the attention it deserved. He said, among other things, “The question of imposing an Islamic rule is different. Why do people object to it? If America and India can have democratic rule, others can have Communism, why object to Islamic rule?”

Presumably to avoid any misunderstanding, Geelani also said, “The creed of socialism and secularism should not touch our lives and we must be totally governed by the Quran and the Sunnat.”

[Varun Gandhi [Images] has been gaoled for reportedly making provocative statements. Would any ministry, either in Delhi [Images] or in Srinagar [Images], ever dare apply the same draconian laws against the Hurriyat Conference chairman?]

Of course, elections were held in Jammu & Kashmir within months of Geelani’s incendiary statements. But the polls have scarcely dampened militant activity in the state, nor do they seem to have notably reduced Geelani-like sentiments. We are now told that the assembly elections were about jobs and the trinity of ‘bijli-sadak-pani’, not about issues of identity.

The Hurriyat Conference leader’s sentiments are shared by others across the world. Shortly after engineering the Taliban’s [Images] ascent to power in the Swat Valley, Mullah Sufi Muhammad gleefully howled, ”We hate democracy. We want the occupation of Islam in the entire world. Islam does not permit democracy or elections.”

It is for Islamic scholars to take up the challenge implicit in that last statement. But if we look at the history of elections in Muslim-dominated nations it is hard to see how voting has led to more ‘secular’, more pluralistic societies.

How many times has Pakistan gone through the ritual of elections? Yet the Pakistan of today is notably less liberal, more hostile to the world at large than Ayub Khan’s Pakistan of the 1960s.

Observers applauded when Sheikh Hasina’s [Images] Awami League won the last election in Bangladesh. But the most notable event of her tenure to date has been the revolt of the Bangladesh Rifles, not confined to Dhaka but spread across a dozen cities. One of Sheikh Hasina’s cabinet ministers, Faruk Khan, has admitted that the rebels were linked to the Jamayetul Mujahideen [Images] Bangladesh, a Muslim fundamentalist outfit. They obviously have as little respect for elections as Mullah Sufi Muhammad on the other end of the subcontinent.

We in India tend to think of Pakistan and Bangladesh only as smaller neighbours. In actuality they happen to be two of the four countries with the largest Muslim citizenry — India and Indonesia being the other two. And “tiny” Afghanistan, as we think of it, is actually home to the eleventh largest Muslim population. (It is also larger in area than Iraq.)

Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan are certainly no advertisement for elections being a shield against Muslim fundamentalism. How do other nations with a large Muslim population fare?

As it happens, some of the largest will be going to the polls this year. Indonesia, with the largest Muslim population on this planet, elects a new parliament on April 9 and a new president on July 8. (There may be runoff elections if nobody comes through with clear majorities in the first round.)

Iran, the principal Shia power and eighth overall in terms of Muslim population, elects a new president on June 12. The West expects little of Iran’s polls. The ultimate arbiter is the Supreme Leader, Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Hoseyni Khamenei no matter who sits in the president’s chair. There is, however, more than the usual amount of interest in Indonesia — partly because of President Obama’s [Images] family links, partly because Indonesia is historically one of the most pluralistic Islamic societies.

Oddly, the influence of the more overtly Islamic, less ‘liberal’ Indonesian parties seems to be increasing over time as it moves from its history of dictatorship to elected governments. The Partai Keadilan Sejahtera (Justice and Prosperity Party) wants a central role for Islam without specifying what that means. The Partai Amanat Nasional (National Mandate Party) speaks out against the historic Hindu and Buddhist influence. Between them they hold 98 seats in the current lower house of parliament, and are generally expected to hold the balance of power in the next one (which will have a total strength of 560).

Indonesia, to be brutally honest, is not an opinion leader in the Muslim world, certainly not on the scale of a Saudi Arabia, an Iran, or an Egypt [Images]. But it is home to the least ‘fundamentalist’ school of Islam. If even Indonesia, that most liberal of Islamic nations, veers to a more puritanical form of Islam with each election, will other Muslim-majority nations act differently?

I come back to where I started. Are the likes of Syed Ali Shah Geelani and Mullah Sufi Muhammad correct in holding that Islam and electoral democracy stand at two ends of the spectrum? And if they are wrong — as I hope they are — where are the Muslim leaders that are telling them off?

T V R Shenoy