The Hindu : Pandya murder trial begins today

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Oct 01, 2003

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Pandya murder trial begins today

By Praveen Swami

AHMEDABAD SEPT. 30. The trial of 18 suspects charged with the assassination of the former Gujarat Home Minister, Haren Pandya, will start in a special court here tomorrow. The suspects include eight city residents who, the Gujarat police claims, were trained at terror camps in Pakistan. The head of the terror cell allegedly responsible for killing Pandya, Maulana Sufiyan Patangia, a local cleric, is yet to be arrested.

Prosecutors say that Mr. Pandya was assassinated for his role in the communal pogrom that began in February 2002. He was alleged o have participated in several outrages, including the demolition of a mosque in the Paldi area of Ahmedabad. The former Home Minister's family, however, had held the Gujarat Chief Minister, Narendra Modi, responsible for eliminating Pandya, his most prominent rival within the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Police officials have produced a welter of evidence to support the communal-vengeance narrative. Patangia, they say, organised young people from Ahmedabad's Muslim ghettos to help with relief work for the victims of the January 26, 2001 Gujarat earthquake. After the United States declared war on the Taliban regime in Afghanistan later that year, the cleric declared that Islam was in danger and began recruiting cadre from among his riot-relief volunteers.

Patangia's volunteers now formed an Islamist study cell called the Idara-e-Fadlullah-ul-Muslimeen or the Institution by the Grace of God for Muslims. The group monitored events in Afghanistan, relying mainly on the Internet since its members were forbidden to use the supposedly anti-Islamic medium of television. Tapes of the Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar were also circulated. Patangia, an investigation insider told The Hindu, used to be jokingly called "Mullah Omar", after the Taliban leader. His second-in-command, Suhail Khan, who is also absconding, adopted Osama bin Laden-style headgear.

In February 2002, as violence broke out in Gujarat, Patangia was in Saudi Arabia on his regular twice-yearly pilgrimage. He used the opportunity, the Gujarat police say, to seek support from the Pakistan-based Islamist right. Abdul Bari, a Hyderabad resident who has for several years been a key Lashkar-e-Taiba leader, offered funds for retaliatory terrorism in Gujarat. Better known by his code-name Abu Hamza, Mr. Bari sent Rs. 3.75 lakhs to fund Patangia's efforts to set up a terrorist cell in Gujarat, police claim.

Patangia also set up two parallel channels of support. Rasool Khan`Party', Ahmedabad slang for wholesale contractors, a Karachi-based lieutenant of the top Mafioso Dawood Ibrahim, was asked to help with arms and explosives. Farhatullah Ghauri and Abdul Rehman, two Jaish-e-Mohammad operatives of Hyderabad origin now based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, were also contacted for similar assistance. The two Jaish operatives, who reported to the Karachi-based commander, Abdullah Shah Mazhar, offered to run explosives and train personnel.

Aided by its overseas contacts, the Gujarat police allege, Patangia's cell carried out a number of terrorist offences before the March 26 assassination of Pandya. On May 29, 2002, the cell set off five low-intensity bombs on public transport buses in Ahmedabad, injuring 26 persons. Then, that July, the group distributed homemade grenades and rifles for an abortive attack on an ongoing rath yatra.

In December, the group sent eight personnel for training in Pakistan through Dubai and Dhaka. Finally, on March 13, 2003, it attempted to assassinate the Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader, Jagdish Tiwari.

Gujarat police officials claim that the attack on Pandya may, paradoxically, have saved Ahmedabad from more serious terrorist offences. "Our investigation," says the Deputy Commissioner of Police, D.G. Vanjara, "found that the eight boys sent for training abroad had been told to sit at home and wait, in the words of their handlers, for instructions to execute an operation that would dwarf the Mumbai serial bombings. Pandya's killings gave us the clues we needed to dismantle the whole cell before any such enterprise could be executed."

Legal experts anticipate a long and bitterly-fought trial, which will test the pogrom-frayed credibility of the Gujarat police.

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