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Shadow of terror : Al Badr plot unearthed in Mysore

	October 30, 2006

Two Pakistani terrorists were arrested in Mysore, Karnataka, on Thursday (Oct. 26), foiling a plot by Pakistan-based Al Badr terrorist outfit to blow up the main seats of power in the state - the Vidhan Soudha and its annexe, Vikas Soudha, in the state capital, Bangalore. Karnataka Police said a sleeper-cell module of the Al Badr outfit has been busted with the arrests. In yet another corroboration of India’s charge about Pakistan’s Inter-services Intelligence (ISI) master-minding the terror campaign in the country, it appears that the two Pakistanis had received training from the Pakistani agency. One of the arrested terrorists, 24 year old Fahad alias Neduthanni is a post-graduate in Analytical Chemistry from Karachi University and an expert in making explosives. He was also well-versed with computer hardware and software.



Director General Karnataka Police B.S.Sial said that the Al Badr was planning to send a team from Kashmir shortly to carry out attacks on the Vidhan Soudha complex in Bangalore and the Central Institute of Indian Languages in Mysore.



Hussein of Manshera in Pakistan and Fahad had surveyed the Vikas Soudha and sent details of the building by e-mail to their headquarters in Pakistan.



A detailed map of the Vikas Soudha was found in a laptop seized from them, according to Mysore Police Commissioner Praveen Sood. Over 2500 telephone numbers were stored in the satellite phone seized from them.





The accused were in Mysore to survey the CIIL, a premier institute that attracts many foreign scholars.



Fahad was entrusted with creating an “Indian identity” for Al-Badr recruits who would be sent to India through the Nepal border. In the past eight months, Fahad received around Rs. 12 lakh through banking channels and a part of the amount was given to Al-Badr cadres.



Police said Fahad came to India from Karachi on a Pakistani passport with an Indian visa issued on November 30, 2005 and valid for 45 days. It allowed him to visit Bangalore and Kolkata but he overstayed his time.



Fahad obtained a driving licence from the Mysore RTO on October 5, 2006 and a birth certificate from the Mysore City Corporation in July.



Hussein, on the other hand, had sneaked into India through the Lepa valley in 2002 and was the district commander of the Al Badr in Kashmir. His job was to create a base for the outfit in south India, Sial said.



Meanwhile, a statement by Suvarna, landlady of the house at Rajivnagar where the two accused lived, contested the encounter theory put out by the police. She said her tenants were picked up by plainclothes men much earlier. “I have not seen my tenants ever since they were taken away by the police 20 days ago,” she told press persons in Mysore.



Observers say that India may raise the matter during next month’s Foreign Secretary level talks with Pakistan. It may also be put before the joint-mechanism on counter-terrorism whenever it is put in place.





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Al Badr - quasi fascist militia set up by Pakistan Army



Al Badr traces its origins to a quasi-fascist militia set up by Pakistan’s armed forces in 1970.



Made up of cadres of the Jamaat-e-Islami and its student wing, the Islami Jamiat-e-Tulaba, the terror group was responsible for large-scale massacres of nationalists, communists and members of the religious minorities during the Bangladesh war of liberation.



After 1979, the Al Badr reinvented itself as a part of the jihad funded by the United States against the Soviet Union’s forces in Afghanistan. Then, from 1988, its infrastructure was used to train ethnic-Kashmiri recruits to fight Indian forces.







By mid-1990, it was operating as part of the Hizb ul-Mujahideen, then a seven-group coalition. It built up a significant operational presence in the Jammu region, notably Rajouri and Poonch.



However, it parted with the Hizb after the non-combatant leadership of the Jamaat-e-Islami in Pakistan attempted to impose its authority over Al Badr commanders.



After this, the Al Badr allied with the Tehreek-i-Islami, a breakaway Jamaat-e-Islami faction, and the Afghan warlord, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.



The Al Badr is known to have been seeking all-India capabilities for some time. In December 2005, the Jammu and Kashmir police eliminated its central-Kashmir commander, Mohammad Wasim. Perhaps the longest-serving Pakistani national among jihadi groups in the State, Wasim was in the process of setting up terror cells outside the State.



Hawala routes have long been used by the Al Badr to funnel funds to its units in Jammu and Kashmir.



The Al-Badr closely cooperates with other Pakistan-based jihadi groups operating against India.



According to a report in Pakistan’s Herald magazine, the Al Badr till recently received monthly subsidies of Rs. 3,00,000 from the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate.



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Mumbai train blasts : Credible evidence of Pak role, says PM



The Prime Minister has said that the evidence of Pakistani hand in the 7/11 Mumbai train blasts is credible. Speaking to the media after the swearing in of new Ministers on October 24, Dr. Manmohan Singh said evidence of ISI role in terror acts in this country was clear enough. His remarks set at rest questions over the quality of proof India has on the involvement of Pakistani establishment and terror outfits operating in that country in the Mumbai serial blasts. They are also expected to clear the air over National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan’s recent TV interview where he had said, India had good evidence of Pakistani involvement even if it was not clinching.



The Prime Minister said that while India would speak to Pakistan on the involvement of its agencies in terror, there would be no break in engagement with Pakistan.



Speaking in Hyderabad on October 26, the Prime Minister said, “the most dangerous threat today is terrorism. From an occasional footnote, it has become a hydra-headed monster. In his address at the Sardar Vallabbhai Patel National Police Academy after the passing out parade of IPS probationers, Dr. Manmohan Singh said today’s terrorists are most sophisticated and have trans-national linkages. He asked the police forces to tackle this danger in a determined manner.



National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan had said on October 22 that the evidence gathered by Mumbai police is as good as we can possible get in terrorist cases, but that it was upto the courts to decide whether it was clinching or not.



“We have connectivity, linkages, confessions. We have a number of arrests which are pretty good. But there are pieces of the puzzle which are not available. I would hesitate to say we have clinching evidence but we have pretty good evidence.”



Describing the proposed joint anti-terror mechanism as “a long rope to Pakistan,” Narayanan said New Delhi was giving Islamabad an opportunity to “prove in deeds what they have said in words” about not allowing Pakistani territory to be used for terrorist acts against India.



Narayanan said Prime Minister Manmohan Singh saw terrorism as India’s biggest problem and “sees most of the threat has come from across the border, from Pakistan.”



Asked about the extent of the Pakistan Government’s alleged involvement in terrorist acts, Narayanan said: “The fact that the ISI is involved is fairly well-known. I think it is not a secret as far as India is concerned ... As far as the Mumbai Police Commissioner is concerned, the involvement of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is closely linked to the ISI, has been proven by the investigation. So I suppose the Mumbai Police Commissioner is right.”



Meanwhile, the Mumbai Police have for the first time identified the Pakistanis allegedly involved in the July 11 train blasts. The anti-terrorist squad has named Aslam Khan Ijazullah and Saeed Khan, but withheld the name of another person, who according to the investigators, smuggled RDX and helped assemble eight pressure cooker devices on July 4, 8 and 9. The ATS said ISI’s alleged complicity first surfaced when a SIMI activist was arrested at Madhubani in Bihar. The arrest of Junaid at Belgaum in Karnataka firmed up the suspicion. The investigators said two ISI officers identified as Hafiz Zubair and Abdul Rehman allegedly guided the terrorists. Police Commissioner A.N. Roy said the ISI has been named on the basis of evidence.





ISI trying to subvert armed forces



The arrest of two Army personnel allegedly involved in passing secret information to Pakistan’s ISI has brought to light attempts from across the border to subvert the armed forces. One of the Army men, Anil Kumar Dubey, posted with the Army General Insurance Dte., was arrested in south-west Delhi on October 20 while allegedly supplying sensitive defence related information to an ISI operative posted in the Pakistan High Commission. Mohd. Farooq, the ISI agent was taken into custody and later handed over to the high commission. Documents relating to defence related matters and compact discs suspected to contain information about the movement and deployment of troops were recovered from Dubey.



In the other incident, Ritesh Kumar Vishwakarma, a Signals man posted in Leh, was arrested on Oct. 20, and a pen drive and photo copies of sensitive documents recovered from him. It was found that he had been in contact with ISI agents operating out of Kathmandu since December last year.



Then Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee said on Oct. 23 that the armed forces will conduct internal investigation to find out the extent of ISI penetration into the armed forces and its likely impact. He said, “It is a matter of concern that ISI is trying to infiltrate and subvert our armed forces.”



Observers say that well over 100 personnel from the Army, IAF and Navy have been found to have connections with ISI agents in some way or the other over the last five or six years.





E-mail threats to President, PM



In Kerala, four persons including the owner of a cyber cafe have been taken into custody in Kochi after Government officials received E-mails threatening Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam ahead of their visits to the state.



The subject line of the e-mail posted in the name of the Students’ Islamic Movement of India reads : “Nov. 1, PM’s last day.” The mail, forwarded to 40 police and civil officials, also threatened to assassinate the President before his 76th birthday.



The mail was later traced to an e-mail joint in Kochi. The police arrested the Internet cafe owner K. Moideen, his wife and two employees.



The mail has references to Mohammed Afzal, who has been sentenced to death for the attack on Parliament in 2001, and mentions the plight of Abdul Nasser Madhani, jailed for his role in the Coimbatore serial blasts.