Author: V.S. Palaniappan
Publication: The Hindu
Date: June 19, 2003
Intelligence reports have warned
of a possible threat to the peace of this riot-ravaged city and a few other
places in Tamil Nadu. The `alert messages' have turned Coimbatore into
a fortress with gun-toting policemen manning checkposts and stepping up
vigil.
Recent inputs from various agencies,
including special units focussing on militant outfits, have cautioned that
ultras in Kerala are brainwashing unemployed youth from poor families in
Coimbatore and suburbs. This came to light following interception of letters
and telephonic conversation between suspected persons and members of extremist
outfits.
A police exercise in shadowing the
suspicious elements and those visiting undertrials in the Coimbatore serial
blasts case in the central prison here has confirmed the inputs. Sleuths
have also stumbled on "some concrete evidence", say police sources.
The February 14, 1998 serial blasts
led to a loss of 58 lives, besides leaving about 200 persons injured. Also
damage to property to the tune of Rs. 17 crores and a serious impact on
trade and industry in the city were caused. Even as the embers of the 1998
blasts are dying down, the intelligence reports have come as a bolt from
the blue.
The sources said youth from Kottaimedu,
Ukkadam, Saramedu, Karumbukkadai, Kuniamuthur and Podanur were reportedly
taken to Malappuram and a few other closeby destinations in Kerala for
training in weaponry and martial arts and use of explosives. They were
brainwashed on the need for protecting their community and their communal
passions were being whipped up by screening CDs on Gujarat riots.
The police intercepts of communication
revealed that the youth were being trained under the pretext of creating
a force for self-defence or for retaliation in the event of a communal
clash. The needle of suspicion pointed to "Truth Voice" (a replacement
for the banned Al-Umma), a secret service agency, and the inputs focussed
on the need for keeping a close watch on this outfit.
The activities of Truth Voice came
to adverse police notice, when some of its activists were arrested in connection
with the murder of Murugesan, an RSS cadre, at Madukkarai here on March
28, 2002. The police considered the killing a revenge for the murder of
Sultan Meeran, a medical shopowner, by an RSS functionary, Purikamal, two
days earlier in the city. These militant outfits were procuring logistics
and assistance from Peshawar, Pakistan, routed through Kozhikode, the sources
explained.
The police already started keeping
a tab on a coir-manufacturing unit on the suburbs of Pollachi, and a Truth
Voice activist hailing from Karumbukkadai, near Kuniamuthur, and a timber
merchant on Mettupalayam Road on suspicion that they were "sympathisers"
of these outfits. The police were probing the meetings these militant undertrials
reportedly had with Tamil extremists in the central prison hospital.
Unable to garner support for pre-empting
the attempts in the neighbouring State, the Tamil Nadu police started all
efforts in defence, putting in place the "Access-Control System" to prevent
violence, the sources admitted.
