INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR: PAPER NO. 761
B.RAMAN
According to media reports, the Bengaluru Police
are presently interrogating 13 persons who have been taken into custody on
suspicion of their involvement in a conspiracy to carry out assassinations of
some targeted individuals in Karnataka and Hyderabad. The media reports have
stated that the suspects under interrogation, all of them Indian nationals, are
alleged to have had links with the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET), a Pakistani terrorist
organisation, and the Bangladesh branch of the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami
(HUJI), which is generally referred to as HUJI (B). Both these organisations
had operated in Hyderabad and Bengaluru in the past.
2. Eleven of the arrests were made on August
29,2012----six in Bengaluru and five in Hubli in Karnataka. The 12th
arrest was made in Hyderabad on August 31 and the 13th in Bengaluru on
September 1,2012. The 11 suspects arrested on August 29 included a journalist,
a doctor and a Junior Research Fellow with the
Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO).
3.Shri Jyoti Prakash Mirji, the Police Commissioner
of Bengaluru City, was reported to have told the media on September 1 that the suspects were self- motivated and
had no direct links with any other group. Their
plan was to kill high profile personalities and cause communal tension
in the country.
4.It is not clear what the Commissioner of Police
meant when he said that the suspects had no link with any other group, since
other reports quoting the police had said that the suspects had links with the
LET and the HUJI (B). Did he mean that the suspects had no links with any other
indigenous organisation such as the Indian Mujahideen, which had in the past
operated in Bengaluru or the Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) or Al
Umma of Tamil Nadu, which had also in the past operated in Bengaluru?
5.On March 30,2006, the Karnataka Police had arrested
at Jelenabad in Gulbarga District one Shamim Ahmed, a suspected activist of the
LET, who was reportedly residing in Goa. An AK-47, two hand-grenades, a mobile
phone, maps of dams and some power grids of Andhra Pradesh, some audio-visual
cassettes and Urdu literature were allegedly found in his possession. It was
not known what happened to him subsequently, whether he was prosecuted, on what
charges and what was the outcome.
6. In January 2008, the Karnataka Police arrested
Riazuddin Nasir alias Mohammad Ghouse of Hyderabad and Asadullah Abubaker of
Hospet. Nasir was a drop-out from an engineering college and Asadullah was a
student of the Karnataka Institute of Medical Sciences in Hubli. Subsequently,
the Police also arrested one Mohammad Asif of the same Institute. During
interrogation, Nasir was reported to have admitted that he had undergone
training in an LET camp in Pakistan in 2006.
7. These three persons were reported to have told
the police that they were planning to
carry out terrorist strikes against foreign tourists in Goa and against
foreign IT companies in Bengaluru.
8. This is the first time many suspects have been
arrested, who were reportedly planning to assassinate individual personalities
with hand-held weapons. No explosive material appears to have been recovered
from them. It is not clear why they chose the targeted persons for
assassination.
9. Some media reports, quoting police sources, have
claimed that the suspects were self-motivated by visiting Internet sites of Al
Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Whereas Al Qaeda based in North
Waziristan of Pakistan has its web sites and propaganda material in the Arabic
language, the AQAP has them in English, including its online motivational
journal called “Inspire”. Anwar al-Awlaki, the Amir of the AQAP who was a US citizen of Yemeni origin, and Samir Khan,
a US citizen of Pakistani origin, who was an associate, were killed in a US
Drone strike in Yemen on September 30,2011.
10.The investigation is likely to be difficult
because the police have not been able to seize any evidence of forensic
significance such as explosive material. The police may have to depend to a large
extent on interrogation for ascertaining details. Cases based on interrogation
and confessions do not often indulge in successful prosecutions, leading to allegations
of mala fide from the Muslim community.
11. The police should keep an open mind in view of
the inadequate forensic evidence and should resist any sensationalisation of
the case, which could cause unnecessary tensions.
12. Since the arrests have been made in Karnataka
as well as in AP and since the conspiracy for targeted assassinations
reportedly involved targets in Karnataka as well as Hyderabad, it might be
useful to have the case investigated by the National Investigation Agency
(NIA). (2-9-12)
(The writer
is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi,
and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Associate
of the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com Twitter @SORBONNE75)
