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Making of a terror MASTERMIND

Making of a terror MASTERMIND

Author: Kingshuk Nag
Publication: The Times of India
Date: September 2, 2007

Introduction: How Shahid the student became Billal the bomber

It was late 2002. Gujarat had just undergone the post-Godhra riots. Fourteen young men crossed over to Pakistan and walked into the welcoming arms of ISI.

Mohammad Shahid alias Billal was not among them, yet the event was crucial to the transformation of the lower middleclass lad into one of India's most dreaded terrorists, now accused of being the mastermind of the two Hyderabad blasts.

Two of the 14 men who went to Pakistan became notorious later: Asghar Ali, who is now serving life imprisonment in Sabarmati jail for assassinating Gujarat BJP home minister Haren Pandya; and Ghulam Yazdani, who was gunned down by cops outside Delhi in March 2006, within hours of the Sankat Mochan blast in Varanasi. It was Yazdani who recruited Billal into Harkat-ul-Jehad-al-Islami (HuJI).

The two knew each other before: they were both members of a local Hyderabadi outfit called Darsgah Jihad-o-Shahadat (DJS), an organisation purportedly created to defend Muslim causes (See story below).

This is how Billal strayed into HuJI: He got on the wrong side of law in late 2002, around the Ganesh festival. Local cops say that Billal, who was then known by his real name Mohammad Shahid, got into a violent scrap with Ganesh puja organisers over the erection of a pandal on wakf land opposite M o o s a r a m b a g h Masjid. This was close to his home in Malakpet. After police broke up the fight, Billal's brother Zahed was booked for attempt to murder and sent to jail. A year later, Billal was booked under section 120 IPC for conspiring to bump off local BJP leader Indrasena Reddy. It was after this that the intermediate student of Mumtaz College absconded and walked right into the arms of terror recruiters.

The merchants of death did not offer Billal a position in HuJI right away: they promised the youth a passage to Saudi Arabia and a livelihood there. They also told him that since the cops were looking for him in Hyderabad, Kolkata would be a good place to fly out of the country. Once in Kolkata they told him that Bangladesh would be a better bet.

So Billal crossed the border and after that his life changed forever. The exact sequence of events is not known to intelligence officials, but in all likelihood he was taken to somewhere in Khulna or Bagerhat district in South Bangladesh. These places are not more than 150 km from the border and Bagerhat has been in the news for the last few years for persecution of the minority Hindu community.

Now began the indoctrination of Billal and it was done by fellow Hyderabadi Ghulam Yazdani. Yazdani, an engineering student in Hyderabad, came from a relatively better background than Billal. More significantly, he was a brighter chap and Billal always looked up to him. The indoctrination process did not take too long.

Billal's first major operation came on Dussehra day on October 12, 2005. In a strike - the logic of which is yet to be unravelled by cops - the empty office of the task force of the Hyderabad police commissioner was blasted by a human bomb. Dalim, the man who had been pushed across the border, left a suicide note for his parents in Bangladesh with Billal. And also an inexplicable note at the site of the blast that said in Urdu: "Aur panchattar aur" (Another seventy-five). To this date the police have not figured out what that meant.

The cops were however able to conclude that the operation had been masterminded by Billal - through interrogation of his brother Zahed and two Bangladeshis picked up in Hyderabad.

The police also realised that a few months before the task force blast, Billal had come visiting Bidar, a town in northern Karnataka just 110 km from Hyderabad. His parents allegedly went to Bidar to meet him, but this is something that they stoutly deny.

After this, Billal became part of bigger operations and he is believed to have had a hand in the Samjhauta Express blast that was designed to derail the Indo-Pakistan peace process.

Following the elimination of Yazdani, Billal emerged as the main man in HuJI with expertise in explosives. So when a bomb went off in the Mecca Masjid just after Friday prayers in mid May, the police was quick to point fingers at Billal.

His father came out in public to say that his son was not a terrorist, but cops dismissed his claims. A senior police official said the likelihood of the involvement of a brother of Billal in the operation could not be ruled out. "He created an alibi for himself. He got himself admitted in hospital on the day of the bomb blast and came out the next day," the officer told TOI.

The latest is that the cops have taken into custody a former police informer, Shadab. This man, who acted as a decoy on behalf of the cops to contact terrorists across the border, turned renegade a few weeks ago. Investigators think Shadab has kept in touch with Billal all this while and if not anything has the latest photograph of the fugitive. The cops, who only have an old worn-out picture, are desperately looking for current images of Billal.


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