Revision as of 22:11, 28 June 2015

SIMI in 2008

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

FROM THE ARCHIVES OF ‘‘THE TIMES OF INDIA’’: 2008

SIMI’s terror fingerprint is spread across the country

Every time a bomb goes off in some part of the country, the needle of suspicion invariably turns to Students’ Islamic Movement of India, with the police making tall claims about the Muslim outfit’s terror network and its links with Pakistan’s ISI. In the past couple of years, as the number of people falling to deadly bombs rose sharply across the country, the crackdown on SIMI intensified as well, even as the group claimed that it had nothing to do with the attacks. On Tuesday, as a Delhi High Court Tribunal gave a clean chit to the Islamic group, it seemed that the allegations against SIMI may not be true. But a hard look at the banned group by TOI reporters reveals that the tribunal’s decision notwithstanding, SIMI fingerprints have cropped up in terror attacks countrywide.

As India tries to recover from the attacks of Jaipur, Bangalore and Ahmedabad in the past three months, security agencies are again keeping a close watch on the cadre of the outfit, which was put under ban for the first time in 2001. Although the movement has been in the news for the past 10 years for all the wrong reasons, it gained notoriety in 2006 when at least 13 SIMI members were arrested for their role in the 7/11 train blasts in Mumbai. Two months later, four bombs, planted on cycles, rocked the textile town of Malegaon in Maharashtra. Again, SIMI members were arrested for their alleged role. At least 33 SIMI members are lodged in Maharashtra prisons, facing charges under the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act.

In neighbouring Karnataka, the police have busted a network of SIMI activists and seized explosives from them. The arrested persons have been accused of having links with terror outfits and planning strikes in the state. Most of the arrested SIMI activists are well-educated. Though none of the terror attacks in the state has been attributed to SIMI so far, the arrested activists have been accused of providing logistics support for the attacks on vital places. In fact, to test the explosives, they had carried out trial blasts near a village in Belgaum district. They had also organised a training camp in the jungles near Hubli.

West Bengal has also been on SIMI’s radar for some time. In 2002, Hasib Raja, a SIMI activist, was arrested with RDX. Investigations revealed that Raja’s intention was to blow up the Howrah Bridge. In 2003, five people, including two SIMI activists, were arrested while trying to remove clips of railway slippers on the Kumardubi-Barakar line.

Though the outfit has an underground network spread across the country, SIMI has become very strong in central India from where it has been spreading its tentacles to other regions. The presence of highly-motivated leaders like Safdar Nagori, who was arrested in Indore recently, has made this part of the country the nerve-centre of SIMI’s planning and strategy. Dr Tanveer, one of the accused in the Mumbai train blasts, spent several years in Nagpur studying Unani medicine near Mominpura. At least six SIMI activists were arrested in Nagpur in connection with Mumbai bombings.

Similar is the story in other states like UP, Assam, Kerala, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, where SIMI activists have been arrested with guns, explosives and blueprints of their terror plans.

But, despite the crackdown on its cadre and a watch on its activities, SIMI has managed to survive and carry on its activities. In Kerala, SIMI has managed to survive under the cover of a slew of Islamic outfits. Intelligence agencies suspect that some of its operatives may have found way into mainstream political parties as well.

The intelligence agencies may be convinced about SIMI’s role in the terror network, but most of activists cooling their heels in jails face cases related to distributing fundamentalist literature. Due to the lack of concrete evidences against the activists, the cases have been moving slowly. For the government, which has been talking of crushing the terror network, it is a cause of concern.

Guilty by Association?

How It Began?

Mohammad Ahmadullah Siddiqi, now a professor of mass communication at Western Illinois University in the US, founded the Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) at Aligarh in April 1977, with a mission to ‘liberate India’ from western cultural influence and convert it into an Islamic society

What is its ideology?

Influenced by the Deoband school of thought, SIMI aims to counter in India what it believes is the increasing moral degeneration, sexual anarchy and ‘insensitiveness’ as a result of following the ‘decadent’ west

How it became controversial?

SIMI originally emerged as a student wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami. But the alliance was shortlived as Jamat disapproved of SIMI’s extremist line.

SIMI was banned first on September 27, 2001, under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act 1967. In July 2006, the Centre told the Unlawful Activities

(Prevention) Tribunal that contrary to notion that SIMI’s activities had declined following its ban, the organization had stepped up its subversive activities and was involved in almost all major explosions, communal violence and circulation of inflammatory material across the country

Timeline

TRYST WITH TERROR TAG

May 14, 2003 |

Mumbai Police arrest three people and foil an alleged SIMI-LeT plan to trigger blasts in Mumbai and Kerala

May 26, 2003 |

Police arrest two SIMI activists in the Ghatkopar bomb blast case in Mumbai

Jul 21, 2003 |

A POTA court in Delhi sentences two SIMI activists for their membership of the banned group

Sep 12, 2003 |

Police arrest two SIMI activists for removing railway sleeper clips in West Bengal Nov 11, 2003 | A Delhi court acquits SIMI president Shahid Badar Falah in a sedition case

Nov 1, 2004 |

Police arrest an alleged SIMI activist, Maulana Nasiruddin, at Hyderabad in connection with former Gujarat minister Haren Pandya’s murder

Jun 11, 2005 |

POTA court acquits eight alleged SIMI activists accused in the Ghatkopar blast case

Jul 11, 2005 |

Police arrest six alleged SIMI activists, including four of a family, at Faizabad, UP, in connection with an attack on the Babri Masjid complex in Ayodhya

Jul 1, 2006 |

UP government withdraws a treason case against SIMI president Shahid Badr Falahi

Jul 6, 2006 |

Supreme Court rejects a SIMI plea seeking revocation of a ban on it

Jul 13, 2006 |

Police arrest around 200 SIMI activists in Mumbai after the deadly train bombings on 7/11

Jul 21, 2006 |

Police arrest three alleged SIMI activists in connection with 7/11 Mumbai blasts

Oct 30, 2006 |

Police arrest Noor-ul-Hooda, a SIMI activist, for his alleged involvement in Malegaon blasts

Feb 15, 2007 |

Supreme Court describes SIMI as a secessionist movement

Mar 27, 2008 |

Madhya Pradesh STF arrests SIMI chief Safdar Nagori along with 11 other alleged activists at Indore

Aug 5, 2008 |

A Selhi High Court Tribunal lifts ban on SIMI

(With inputs from Mumbai, Lucknow, Jaipur, Kolkata, Nagpur, Guwahati, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Kochi)

SIMI’s appeal

It’s radicalism that appeals to educated men

Mohammed Wajihuddin | TNN

FROM THE ARCHIVES OF ‘‘THE TIMES OF INDIA’’: 2008

Mumbai: It began as a front for Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), an organisation which has nursed a dream of seeing all Muslims live under an Islamic state. However, somewhere down the road, SIMI deviated from its parent body’s ideals and took to radicalising Muslim youth.

No Muslim leader today accepts that SIMI members are involved in terror attacks. But no one denies the fact that SIMI, in the name of avenging injustice to Muslim, real or imagined, managed to brainwash a section of the educated Muslim youth.

‘‘They would paste posters which had slogans like ‘Bhej illahi phir koi Salahuddin Ayubi (God, send again a Salahuddin Ayubi)’. Ayubi was a 12th century warrior who recaptured Jerusalem from the crusaders. It didn’t gel with the constitution of JI,’’ Aslam Ghazi, JI’s spokesperson in Maharashtra, recalled.

Formed in 1977, SIMI initially worked closely with the JI. But when the JI asked SIMI to work as its student wing, the group declined. ‘‘They

said they would morally support the Jamaat-e-Islami but would not work as its student wing,’’ Ghazi said.

Subsequently, the JI, then headed by Maulana Abu Lais, at its conference in 1982, formed the Students’ Islamic Organisation (SIO), its official student wing. Some of the 1980s events, like the Shah Bano case, the unlocking of the door of Babri Masjid which was followed by L K Advani’s rath yatra helped SIMI get its ground among a section of angry, educated Muslim youths. ‘‘We knew the boys had religious leanings but realised their extreme way of interpreting Islam only after the demolition of the Babri Masjid,’’ All-India Ulema Association president Maulana Athar Ali said.

After its demolition, posters with pictures of the mosque — its domes dripping blood — appeared in Muslim pockets. Some JI members tried to dissuade SIMI from radicalising Muslims youths but in vain. Finally, in the late 1990s, the JI, its members claimed, completely distanced itself from SIMI and its activities.

‘‘We never approved violence for redressal of our grievances. But then SIMI members were never our boys. Why would they listen to us?’’ Maulana Mustaqeem Azmi, a member of Jamiatul Ulema-e-Hind, an organisation of madrasa-educated maulvis which had opposed the Partition, said.