The Hindu : National : Nasir can help unravel HuJI network: sleuths

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Nasir can help unravel HuJI network: sleuths

Praveen Swami

Linked to bombings across country in 2005-2006

Trained with a Pakistan-based HuJI cell
Returned to India through Bangladesh in August 2007

NEW DELHI: India’s intelligence services believe a Karnataka resident held earlier this month on car theft charges could help unravel a Harkat-ul-Jihad-e-Islami network thought to be responsible for a string of terrorist bombings that claimed over a 100 lives across the country in 2005-2006.

Sources associated with the interrogation of Hyderabad-born Ziauddin Nasir said evidence has emerged that he trained with a Pakistan-based HuJI cell responsible for strikes in Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan for six months, before returning to India through Bangladesh in August, 2007.

Among other things, investigators hope to establish whether the head of the cell, Mohammad Abdul Shahid, is still alive or whether unconfirmed rumours that he was eliminated in an August 2007 shootout in Karachi are correct. Operating under the alias ‘Bilal,’ one-time Hyderabad resident Shahid is wanted by Interpol for several bombings, including a May attack on the city’s Mecca Masjid. Investigators also hope to learn more about the whereabouts of Shahid’s Lahore-based second-in-command Mohammad Amjad, who like him is a one-time Hyderabad resident.

In addition, they believe Nasir’s interrogation could cast light on the whereabouts of HuJI bomb-maker Mohammad Sharifuddin, code-named ‘Kanchan,’ who was rumoured to have been arrested in Dhaka last year.

Amjad is thought to have engineered the August 2007 serial bombings in Hyderabad, as well as a subsequent strike at the Ajmer Sharif shrine in Rajasthan, with explosives sourced from Jammu and Kashmir-based HuJI commander Bashir Mir, who was killed last week.

Sharifuddin, for his part, is believed to have fabricated the cellphone-triggered explosive devices used in the bombings.

Shahid, who dropped out of college a year after his graduation from the Asafiya High School in Hyderabad, is believed to have been one of over a dozen men recruited by the Lashkar-e-Taiba in the wake of the Gujarat communal pogrom of 2002.

Related by marriage, through his brother Khaliq Rehman, to the Gujarat mafioso Rasool Khan Yakub Khan Pathan, Shahid then trained in Pakistan. The Central Bureau of Investigation later found that under the tutelage of top HuJI operative Asad Yazdani, he helped organise the first terror strike intended to avenge the pogrom — the assassination of former Gujarat Home Minister Haren Pandya.

Maulvi Mohammad Nasiruddin, Nasir’s father, is currently serving a prison sentence for his role in the assassination. After Yazdani’s death in a shootout with the Delhi Police, Shahid inherited the networks his mentor had built. Although he had been recruited by the Lashkar, he depended on the Bangladesh-based HuJI for infrastructure and logistical support.

Set up by Bangladeshi veterans of the anti-Soviet Union jihad in Afghanistan, HuJI had long standing links with Islamists in India. Between April and June 2005 investigators have been able to establish that Shahid based himself in Bidar, Karnataka, and used these links to organise a series of successful terrorist bombings, starting with a 2005 suicide-attack on a counter-terrorism police office in Hyderabad, and the 2006 bombing of the Sankat Mochan temple in Varanasi.

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