Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

Recruiting agent, a master of disguises

— PHOTO: NAGARA GOPAL

Testing times: Security was beefed up and a high alert sounded in the city following the shooting incident at Santoshnagar on Wednesday.

HYDERABAD: On police records, 25-year-old Vikar Ahmed aka Ali Khan of Old Malakpet figured in one case of criminal conspiracy.

But intelligence agencies suspect Vikar Ahmed, who escaped along with his associates after firing at a police party trying to nab them on Wednesday, is an ‘excellent resourceful person’ for terrorist modules for all their cyber activities. Policemen tracking his movements said they found that he had 14 different e-mail IDs.

Sources maintained that they stumbled upon evidence linking him to Shahid Badar Salahi of the outlawed Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). Vikar Ahmed, it is believed, was instrumental in recruiting scores of youths from Hyderabad to work for several proscribed terrorist outfits backed by Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI).

Well-versed with Internet-based technology, he allegedly coordinated with different terrorist modules to campaign for ‘jihad’ through circulating audio and video CDs depicting “atrocities on Muslims” in Chechnya and Bosnia. Intelligence officials believe he also used to send e-mails and video footage about “atrocities on civilians in Afghanistan” to Hyderabadi youths and thus provoke them to work for terrorist outfits. Police say he was an active member of the Hyderabad-based religious fundamentalist organisation Darsgah Jihad-O-Shahadat (DJS) and connected to all of its key operatives. He eventually developed connections with the SIMI top cadre as well.

There was no evidence to link him with the Harkat-ul-Jehadi-e-Islami (HUJI) terror cell commander Mohammed Abdul Shahid alias Bilal, who hailed from Moosarambagh and masterminded Mecca Masjid blast from abroad. But Vikar Ahmed grew up as Shahid’s admirer.

Vikar Ahmed is said to be well connected with terror campaigners operating from Bangladesh, Qatar and Oman. As he went underground immediately after the bomb explosion in Mecca Masjid triggered by terrorists, investigators suspected his possible complicity in it.

But investigators said the terror suspect had changed his appearances four times in the past one year.

“From a bearded man, Vikar Ahmed shaved his beard completely and looked like a western youth wearing fashionable clothes apparently to hoodwink policemen stalking him,” an official remarked.

In fact, the three policemen tracking him were initially doubtful if the person coming out of a telephone booth at Indira Seva Sadan was the same Vikar Ahmed they were looking out for. They went close to him to make sure he was the suspect they wanted and that gave a chance for him and his associates to open fire, it is said.

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