Author: Pioneer News Service
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: August 23, 2008
The revelation by the Crime Branch of the
Gujarat Police on Saturday that banned Islamist outfit SIMI had held a full-fledged
training camp at the jungles near Vagamon in the Kerala-Tamil Nadu border
in Idukki district has put the Kerala Police in a spot though Home Minister
Kodiyeri Balakrishnan tried to put up a brave face by saying the police had
been in the know of this.
Balakrishnan said in Alappuzha on Saturday
that Kerala Police was aware of the information revealed by the the Director
General of Police, Gujarat with regard to the SIMI camp in the hill report
of Vagamon. He said the police had known about the camps SIMI had held in
Vagamon and Binanipuram off Kochi. The police had also started investigation
with cases registered in this regard in Binanipuram and Mundakkayam, he said.
He added that the police were trying to avoid delays in these investigations.
Balskrishnan said that complaints had come
up about harassment of a particular minority community just when the police
were about to nail some people. Some human rights organisations also had come
out against the investigations, he said. He asked the rights groups to take
a new position in the context of the new revelations by the Gujarat Police.
The Home Minister also said that some Malayalees
going outside the State for several reasons had links with certain extremist
outfits. But they were not working inside the State, he claimed.
However, top police officials remained tight-lipped
about the revelation by the Gujarat Police on the pretext that they could
not reveal anything for security reasons. Despite the confidence aired by
the Home Minister, several of the officials sounded unsure about the situation.
An official said that such things were not unknown.
"Even Chief Minister VS Achuthanandan
had in his Independence Day speech said that extremists were operating in
Kerala "overtly and covertly". We know of such things and we have
been acting against them in our way," a top official protested.
The DGP, Gujarat, said that SIMI operatives
numbering between 40 and 50 had taken part in the two camps held at the jungles
off Vagamon on December 8, 2007 and January 2008. He said that the operatives
had undergone commando training here and bomb-making techniques from a foreign
national.
He said that the SIMI activists had undergone
training in jungle warfare, survival games to prepare for extreme conditions,
rope training, etc. However, he did not go into the details due to security
risks.
Certain retired top cops in the State suspected
that political decisions were pulling the law-enforcers away from conducting
searches for extremist elements. They said extremist incursions into Kerala,
especially through the low-surveillance border areas in the bushy Idukki hills,
were not unknown. They also said that political influences had several times
held back sleuths from carrying out checks in the urban camps of these elements.
"Vagamon, with virtually no police surveillance,
is an appropriate place for such training operations. This place with its
meadow-like expanses of terrain is almost cut off from the world and keeping
a watch for hostile elements is easy for those who undergo training here due
to the peculiarity of the terrain," said a former police official who
had worked in Idukki district earlier.
"Even gun-training can be conducted here
without being noticed by the world outside due to two factors. One is the
remoteness of the area and the second is the ever-blowing strong winds which
would drown any sounds," he said. Vagamon is some 150 km southeast of
Kochi city.
The Pioneer had earlier reported about presence
of suspicious domestic and international elements in the border areas in Idukki
district. Intelligence agencies had months back come to know about activities
of hostile persons and groups in the area, but sources said that the top-brass
of the State police had either remained complacent or were held back from
acting by political influences.
Altaf Ahmed Khan, a Kashmiri youth and former
operative of terror outfit Hizbul Mujahiddin, who was working at a carpet
shop in Kumili in Idukki, had been arrested in January last. His associate
Jehangir also had been taken into custody but was let off after interrogation
as there had been no track records of his involvement in subversive activities.