Author: Vishwa Mohan
Publication: The Times of India
Date: August 22, 2008
URL: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Dawood_funding_SIMI_terror_campaign_says_intelligence/rssarticleshow/3391080.cms
Fugitive Mumbai mafiosi Dawood Ibrahim has
been identified as one of those funding banned jihadi outfit SIMI's terror
campaign against India, in what is seen as disturbing disclosure of the jihadi-underworld
nexus.
According to a dossier prepared by intelligence
agencies, Dawood, who masterminded the 1993 serial blasts in Mumbai, has been
routing funds to SIMI through an aeronautical engineer, C A M Basheer, from
Kerala. Said to be SIMI's chief fundraiser, Basheer, who looked after the
operations of the banned outfit in Kerala, is now holed up somewhere in Saudi
Arabia. The matter came up for discussion in a high-level meeting on SIMI
in the wake of new facts which emerged during the probe of Ahmedabad serial
blasts.
Though SIMI's footprints had been traced in earlier terror incidents, including
Mumbai serial blasts and Malegaon bombings as well, the focus this time was
on its 50 fronts and their funding which is being handled by Basheer through
his network.
It was also specifically mentioned in the
meeting that Basheer, who hails from Aluva in Ernakulam district, had made
Kerala one of the strongest bases of SIMI - a fact which also came to light
after the arrest of 10 terrorists, including Mufti Abu Bashar of Azamgarh,
UP, in connection with the Ahmedabad serial blasts.
Dawood's links should not surprise the counter-terror
agencies. Those tracking the chief of the notorious D-Company are sure that
Pakistan's ISI - which instigated the don, tapping into the gang's anger against
the communal riots in the city to organise the terrorist aggression against
Mumbai in 1993 - has since fully co-opted him into its battle against India.
But evidence that SIMI has access to the underworld's huge coffers should
deepen worries about the jihadi outfit whose resilience and reach has come
as a surprise.
Basheer went underground in 2001 when the
outfit was first banned. His dossier reveals that he had been funding not
only SIMI but also most of its fronts utilizing his links with Dawood and
his cronies in the Gulf countries by creating a corpus under "Muslim
Defence Fund".
After completing his aeronautical engineering
course from Cochin University, Basheer had joined a flight training institute
in Bangalore in the 1980s. Later, he shifted to Mumbai where he developed
his links with underworld operatives. Attended by top officials from states,
Intelligence Bureau and home ministry, the meeting on Thursday also outlined
the modalities to go all out against these fronts by keeping records of the
activities of each and every individual associated with the groups.
"Representatives of states were asked
to gather concrete evidence against these fronts so that these can be banned
like their parent body SIMI," said a senior official.
It was also decided in the meeting that the
home ministry would soon write to UP - where 34 districts are considered to
be sensitive as far as activities of SIMI are concerned - urging it to ban
the outfit.
The move assumes significance in view of Mayawati
government's willingness to bring SIMI in the banned category, provided the
state gets sufficient evidence. It is learnt that the home ministry would
provide the state with evidence which has been emerging during the course
of Ahmedabad and Jaipur serial blasts probe - making a strong case for SIMI's
ban in UP which, incidentally, also traced the outfit's footprints in bomb
blasts in Faizabad, Lucknow and Varanasi. It was disclosed in the meeting
that while four of the total 50 SIMI fronts were working at an all-India level,
46 of them were active in seven states and Delhi.
The maximum 23 of them are active in Kerala
followed by eight in Maharashtra, seven in West Bengal, three in Bihar, two
in UP and one each in Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka and Delhi. Though the respective
state police have been keeping watch on these fronts, they - as home ministry
feels - are not "watchful enough" to crack evidence of their direct
links with SIMI. "After all, one has to have concrete evidence to ban
them under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and subsequently prove
it in the courts," said a senior officer.
