The Hindu : Front Page : ‘Intelligence warning on terror plot failed to spark police action’

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Wednesday, Aug 29, 2007
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‘Intelligence warning on terror plot failed to spark police action’

Praveen Swami

A.P. was fearful of sanctioning standard emergency-response procedures

NEW DELHI: Andhra Pradesh Director-General of Police M.A. Basith and Hyderabad Police Commissioner Balwinder Singh received warnings of an imminent terror strike just five days before Saturday’s blasts, sources in the Union Ministry of Home Affairs have told The Hindu.

Issued by the Intelligence Bureau, the written warning — an Unofficial Order, or UO in government terminology —recorded that a cell commanded by Karachi-based Islamist Abdul Sahed Mohammad had put plans in place for a major attack in the city. The UO provided an outline of available intelligence on the cell and its members.

A former resident of Hyderabad’s Moosarambagh neighbourhood who is commonly referred to by his aliases Bilal and Shahid, Mohammad is alleged to have been responsible for at least four past terror strikes, and is wanted by the international police organisation INTERPOL.

It is unclear if either Mr. Basith or Mr. Singh passed on the contents of the warning to their subordinates for action. However, Union Home Ministry sources said that the State government was fearful of sanctioning standard emergency-response procedures, like large-scale searches, raids on the homes of suspected harbourers of terrorists, and the questioning of those known to be involved with city-based Islamist groups.

“There was a legitimate concern that such action could have fuelled communal tension in Hyderabad,” a senior Union Home Ministry official said. “In the wake of the Mecca Masjid bombing in May,” he said, “many city Muslims were dismissive of claims that an Islamist terror group had carried out the strike, and deeply resentful of police action based on that line of investigation. Large-scale arrests could have provoked a riot — and thus ended up helping the terrorists.”

Concerns misplaced

However, experts said these concerns were misplaced. “It is imperative that intelligence work and policing are kept out of the domain of party politics,” the former Intelligence Bureau Director, Ajit Doval, told The Hindu. “If the intelligence services find out that I am about to plant a bomb in New Delhi,” he argued, “the common-sense thing to do is to detain my friends and associates in order to discover where I might be.”

Search for Sahed

Saturday’s blasts have now provoked a wide-ranging investigation of Mohammad’s networks in Hyderabad. Built in coordination with Asad Yazdani — a resident of Hyderabad’s Toli Chowki area, who operating under the alias Naved Gul executed several terror strikes including the assassination of Gujarat Home Minister Haren Pandya — these networks drew heavily on the Lashkar-e-Taiba’s resources.

However, after the 2002 communal pogrom in Gujarat, both Yazdani and Mohammad attracted several new recruits. Their new cells worked closely with the Bangladesh-based Harkat ul-Jihad-e-Islami.

At least two of Mohammad’s past operations — an October 12, 2005 suicide attack on a police facility in Hyderabad, and the Mecca Masjid bombing — are thought to have involved Bangladeshi nationals involved in HuJI

Police sources said that while two local operatives who may have helped organise Saturday’s blasts had been identified, the actual bomb-maker may well have escaped India. Mohammad Sharifuddin — a Bangladeshi HuJI operative who operates under the code-names ‘Hamza’ and ‘Kanchan,’ — is thought to have made the bombs used in Mohammad’s earlier operations, but has evaded arrest in this way.

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