Author: Uday Mahurkar
Publication: India Today
Date: May 12, 2003
URL: http://www.indiatoday.com/itoday/20030512/states_gujarat.shtml
Introduction: Pandya murder probe
reveals Gujarati youth are being trained in Pakistani terror factories
Haren Pandya, Gujarat's former minister
of state for home, was gunned down on March 26. His killing early one spring
morning in Ahmedabad was political dynamite, severely embarrassing Chief
Minister Narendra Modi, Pandya's arch-foe.
Now, more than a month after the
event, CBI and police investigations have revealed not merely the extent
of the conspiracy but also that young men from Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh
are being taken to Pakistan to be schooled in Islamist militancy. A phenomenon
thought to be limited to Jammu and Kashmir has expanded its geographical
reach.
This past week Muslim groups in
both Ahmedabad and Hyderabad termed the police action in the Pandya case
"misleading and high-handed". The law enforcers went about their task unfazed,
arresting Mulla Kalim (aka Shahnawaz Gandhi) and Anas Machiswala.
The two Ahmedabad residents-also
said to be behind the blasts in public buses in the city in May 2002-are
charged with planning Pandya's killing and were arrested in Andhra Pradesh's
Medak district. Still on the run is Sufian Ahmedmiya Patangia, maulvi of
Ahmedabad's Lal Deobandi Masjid and, according to the police, the key to
Operation Pandya.
In late April in Hyderabad, the
CBI had arrested Asghar Ali-the man who actually pulled the trigger on
March 26. Ali's interrogation revealed that he had facilitated the travel
of many unemployed Muslim youth to Pakistan for arms training.
Ali made particular reference to
five young men arrested by the Ahmedabad Crime Branch in the first week
of April. Four of them were educated, fluent in English, children of wealthy
business families, unlikely religious extremists. Riyaz Sareshwala, Yunus
Sareshwala, Rehan Puthawala, Pervez Shaikh and Munnawar Beg (aka Captain
Mirza) were sent to Pakistan by Patangia and Kalim in December 2002. They
were trained in arms at a Jaish-e-Mohammed camp in the Kirtar Hills area,
a three-hour drive from Karachi.
On their return home, they set up
an ISI sleeper cell in Ahmedabad and provided logistical back-up for the
Pandya murder. The idea of killing a Gujarat BJP politician was apparently
that of Patangia and Rasool Khan (aka Rasool Party). Rasool had fled Ahmedabad
in 1992, following the murder of Raoof Valiullah, former Congress MP. Escaping
to Hyderabad, he set up base there for a few years, later landing up in
Karachi and becoming part of underworld don Dawood Ibrahim's gang.
In December last year, Rasool received
the five recruits from Ahmedabad at Karachi airport. They were then trained
to become small-time terrorists and, specifically, help eliminate Sangh
Parivar leaders. With the killing of Pandya, Rasool hit the bull's-eye.
Ensconced in Karachi, Rasool may
be beyond Indian law. Patangia is more likely to be caught. The bigger
worry is that almost all the accused are Sunni Bohras, members of a Muslim
sect hitherto seen as moderate. The incursion of the radical Tableegh Jamaat-Deobandi
school into the Sunni Bohra community has long been feared. After the Pandya
case, it has been established-with the most tragic consequences.
