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Key Gujarat bombings suspect in Mumbai?

Praveen Swami

New Indian Mujahideen e-mail warns of more attacks; claims suspects are innocent

Qureshi left Ahmedabad on
July 24
Saturday’s e-mail bears the signature of al-Arbi

NEW DELHI: Top Indian Mujahideen operative Abdul Subhan Qureshi, who investigators believe was the principal architect of the July serial bombings in Gujarat, could be hiding in Mumbai, according to the Maharashtra police.

Police sources said their belief rested on the fact that an e-mail issued on Saturday, insisting that suspects held for their alleged role in the bombings are innocent and threatening further attacks, has been traced to a computer in Mumbai’s Matunga area.

Investigators have determined that Qureshi, who investigators say wrote the e-mail claiming responsibility for the bombings on behalf of the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) and Lashkar-e-Taiba-linked Indian Mujahideen, left for Mumbai on a night train from Ahmedabad on July 24, two days before the bombings.

Qureshi is thought to have e-mailed the Indian Mujahideen minutes before the bombing using a private home’s unsecured wi-fi network in Navi Mumbai.

The Gujarat police said Qureshi, a crack bomb-maker, who is believed to have held several training camps for SIMI operatives from 2006 to 2008, spent at least eight weeks in a flat in Ahmedabad’s Vatva neighbourhood, supervising the making of the explosive devices used in Gujarat. Qureshi, the Gujarat police claims to have been told by arrested suspects, also organised for contacts in Mumbai to provide four stolen cars used in the bombings.

Photographs of at least two of the stolen cars are contained in the e-mail, to establish its authenticity.

Qureshi graduated from the Bharatiya Vidyapeeth in suburban Mumbai’s Kharghar area in 1990, and later did a computer course from a private institute.

For some time, he worked as a salesperson for a company that marketed Wipro computer products in Mumbai’s western suburbs.

He was recruited by SIMI in 1998, shortly before the critical Aurangabad convention where jihadists in its ranks first developed an organisational relationship with the Lashkar-e-Taiba.

Soon after, Qureshi left his job to become a full-time Rukun, or organisational cadre.

He became close to a core circle of operatives who were to execute a series of major terrorist attacks, starting with the Gateway of India bombings in 2003.

Qureshi’s associates in SIMI include Rahil Abdul Rehman Sheikh, who is wanted for his central role in organising the 2006 serial bombings in Mumbai, and Ehtesham Siddiqi, the former SIMI Maharashtra general-secretary, who is now being tried for his alleged role in the attacks.

e-mail claims

In the e-mail, the Indian Mujahideen “on its full authority” declares that “by the Grace of Allah not even a single mujahid from our ranks, who played even a minute role in the blasts, has been arrested to date. We are completely safe and in Allah, The Most Sublime, do the believers put their trust. Whatever [Gujarat police officers] Ashish Bhatia and P.C. Pandey have bragged about [key suspects] Mufti Abul Bashir, Sajid Mansuri, Zahid Shaikh and other innocent brothers like them is a big lie.”

However, the Indian Mujahideen addresses the escaped multitude of faithless disbelievers, “thanking our Lord for humiliating you by our hands at Ahmedabad and Surat and calming our hearts by chastising your bodies with a disgraceful punishment.”

It states: “we declare that with the will of Allah [that] our attacks on you will be severely intensified from now on and with our extremely lethal strikes, which are to follow successively, we shall make you weep and repent for the evil hatred and grudge against Islam and Muslims.”

In the e-mail, the Indian Mujahideen seems to suggest that a set of malfunctioning improvised explosive devices found in Surat were designed not to detonate. “You are nothing but victims of our terrorizing plan that turns you helpless when the Wrath of Allah descends on you. Just think O numbskulls! How many microchips can be faulty? One? Or two? Or all thirty at the same time? This is yet another threat to those filthy Hindus of Surat, who have failed to take heed, and a reminder to Narendra Modi that it is not over.”

Saturday’s e-mail bears the signature of an individual, who identities himself by the pseudonym al-Arbi. Al-Arbi’s signature also figured on the Indian Mujahideen e-mail issued minutes after the Gujarat bombings, along with that of another operative who uses the pseudonym Guru al-Hindi.

Guru al-Hindi was the sole signatory on Indian Mujahideen messages that were issued after the terror attacks in Jaipur and on three trial court buildings in Uttar Pradesh.

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