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Maharashtra hub for Gujarat terror strikes

NEW DELHI: Investigators believe that much of the infrastructure for the Ahmedabad serial bombings was provided by a cell based in Navi Mumbai, Maharashtra.

Police in Gujarat and Maharashtra have established that all four cars used in the bombings were reported stolen from the Navi Mumbai area in the first two weeks of July. While a Wagon R and a Maruti 800 were used as car-bombs in Ahmedabad, two other Wagon R cars were found abandoned in Surat, packed with detonators, timers and explosives. All four vehicles bore fake licence plates, bearing numbers issued to two-wheelers in Gujarat.

Mumbai police investigators have also determined that a Navi Mumbai resident most likely sent out the e-mail claiming responsibility for the bombing on behalf of a group calling itself the Indian Mujahideen.

Based on the e-mail’s internet protocol address, police raided the Navi Mumbai house of a United States national working for a multinational corporation. However, investigators learned that the house operated wireless internet network which was not password-protected, allowing the terrorists to easily access it using a laptop computer. More likely than not, police believe, this suggests the author was a local resident who had used the unsecured network more than once in recent weeks.

Unlike past e-mail claims issued by the Indian Mujahideen, which comprises SIMI cadre backed by the Lahskar-e-Taiba and Harkat ul-Jihad-e-Isalmi, the Ahmedabad bombing manifesto contained a significant degree of Maharashtra-specific content.

For example, the e-mail threatened Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh and his deputy, R.R. Patil, with attacks to protest against alleged “state reserve police force attacks on our Masjids and our homes, the insult of our Quran and your enmity with the Muslims in Digras and the nearby areas in Yavatmal and of the burning alive of three Muslims in Jalna with the backing of police. It also raised Mumbai-specific issues like troubles faced by the Madrasa students and Muslim women in Mumbai Western Railways.”

Maharashtra-based SIMI units have been at the cutting edge of past efforts to execute large scale terrorist attacks in Gujarat which, the Islamist organisation claims, is intended to avenge the communal pogrom of 2002.

In May 2006, the Intelligence Bureau prevented a potentially-catastrophic bombing in Gujarat, penetrating an Aurangabad-based SIMI unit which was in an advanced stage of preparation for serial bomb strikes. Investigators recovered two dozen kg of lethal RDX explosives, packed inside 10 computer CPU cases, along with 11 assault rifles and ammunition. However, cell leader SIMI operative Zabiuddin Ansari escaped the police despite a high-speed car chase.

Maharashtra-based SIMI bomb-maker Zulfikar Fayyaz Kagzi built the sophisticated suitcase-bomb that was planted on the Mumbai-Ahmedabad express train in February 2006. An error in the timer circuit led the bomb to explode 12 hours after its scheduled detonation time, by which time train cleaning staff had deposited the suitcase in an empty corner of the Ahmedabad railway station.

Raziuddin Nasir, a SIMI operative who was arrested for planning terror strikes in Bangalore and Goa last year, reported meeting both Ansari and Sheikh at a Lashkar office in Pakistan.

In June, 2004, the Lashkar-e-Taiba despatched two Pakistani nationals from Jammu and Kashmir to execute a ‘fidayeen’ attack in Gujarat, after publicly warning it intended to avenge the pogrom.

Jishan Johar, a resident of Gujranwala in Pakistan, and Amjad Ali Rana, who hailed form Sargodha, were killed in a controversial encounter in Ahmedabad along with SIMI activist Javed Sheikh and his friend, Ishrat Jehan Raza. Raza’s death was later given special mention on the Lashkar website. Sohail Mohammad Sheikh and Zamir Ahmed Latif Chaabiwala, who were arrested by the Mumbai Police in 2007, told investigators that they had discussed assassinating Gujarat police officers linked to the pogrom with their Lashkar handlers. Sheikh and Chaabiwala are alleged to have trained at Lashkar-run facilities in Muzaffarabad and Bahawalpur, Pakistan, in the summer of 2005.

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