National

2 more jihadists from Kerala killed

NEW DELHI / THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Police in three states are investigating the prospect that a group of south Indian jihadists killed in Jammu and Kashmir could be linked to the Indian Mujahideen’s nationwide terror offensive.

Early on Saturday, an Army patrol on the remote high-altitude forests of Lolab shot dead two members of a five-member jihadist cell. Jammu and Kashmir Police investigators believe that the men were part of a group of Kerala residents preparing to cross the Line of Control to train at a Lashkar-e-Taiba facility in Pakistan. Police and Army personnel had shot dead two other members of the jihadist cell on October 7.

A fifth member of the cell, whose presence in the Lolab area was reported by a police informant earlier this month, is still believed to be alive.

Army sources told The Hindu that several fragments of evidence linking the two men killed on Saturday to Kerala and Karnataka had been found among their belongings.

One of the men, the sources said, carried a medical prescription issued by the outpatient department of an indigenous medicine clinic for a 19-year-old Kerala woman, identified in the document by the single name Hazra. The prescription was issued on September 10, suggesting the south Indian jihadists left for Jammu and Kashmir after this date.

The men also carried stubs of Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation bus tickets, with markings indicating they had travelled from or to a location near Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu. Investigators hope the ticket stubs will lead to the identification of the group’s point of origin, and the date of their travel.

Finally, the sources said, an election identification card issued to a Perumbavoor Assembly constituency resident named Revi Kurien was also found among the killed men’s personal effects. Police had recovered voter identification card CK 1220797, from the jihadists killed on October 7.

Kerala investigators have determined that the card had been issued in February, 2001 to Shakir Ahmad, a Parapappnamgadi resident who lived abroad for most of the past two decades.

Mr. Ahmad, who now lives in his home town, is not known to have had contact with Islamist terror groups. However, there is no official word so far on how his identification card was found on the body of an individual killed in combat with Indian troops in Jammu and Kashmir.

Karnataka Police sources said they were exploring the possibility that the men killed in Lolab could be linked to a still-unidentified module of the Indian Mujahideen, which is thought to have manufactured the bombs used for the Islamist terror groups attacks.

Based on the interrogation of suspects held in Ahmedabad, Mumbai and New Delhi, police believe that the bomb components were manufactured in a facility near Mangalore.

Now, the emerging evidence of links between the Kerala jihadists and the Lashkar has raised the prospect that the infrastructure for the Mangalore facility was provided by the Pakistan-based terror group.

Investigators say it is possible that the Lashkar’s north Kashmir operations chief, a shadowy figure who uses the code-name Abu Moosa, could have acted as the liaison between the terror groups Pakistan-based leadership and Indian Mujahideen commanders.

Investigations of the December, 2007, synchronised bombing of trial court buildings at Lucknow, Faizabad and Varanasithe operation conducted by jihadists using the Indian Mujahideen flag had thrown up evidence of links between the attacks and Jammu and Kashmir-based terror groups.

Police in Uttar Pradesh allege that Jaunpur-based Mohammad Khalid Mujahid and Tariq Kazmi, used explosives provided by Jammu and Kashmir Harkat ul-Jihad-e-Islami commander Bashir Mir to execute the bombings. Mir was killed in a January, 2008, encounter with police and troops near Doda, in the Jammu region.

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