‘Indian Mujahideen is Pak’s local outsourcing of terror’

‘Indian Mujahideen is Pak’s local outsourcing of terror’
Date: Sept 21, 2008
Mailtoday,
Mail Today spoke to the country’s three most renowned security experts – former BSF director-general Prakash singh, former IB director Ajit Doval and retired D-G of the NSG and former Delhi Police Commissioner Ved Marwah – to get a closer insight into what Indian Mujahideen is all about:

Is IM an email ID or is it really the new name for terror in India?
AJIT DOVAL: IM is a case of local outsourcing of terror done by Pakistan. In SIMI, Pakistan’s terror outfits found a perfect ally in terms of ideology, age-group and reach across the country.
VED MARWAH: Don’t discount the Pakistan hand in IM. Make no mistake – IM could be a radical local outfit but it is a part of a global jehadi network.
PRAKASH SINGH: IM seems for real, but it can’t be mistaken for a completely indigenous outfit as it wanted everyone to believe through its emails.

But all 13 names of IM cadre given out by the Delhi Police today belong to Azamgarh in UP and are all educated youth…
AJIT DOVAL: It is a cleverly thought-out strategy to militarise some young Indian Muslims and polarize the Indian Muslim population.
VED MARWAH: These are local networks which have been raised by groups like LeT and ISI in Pakistan. The local cells are activated when a terror strike is executed in India.
PRAKASH SINGH: The ‘mastermind’ is using the expanding SIMI network in India to rope in the new generation of educated. IM has apparently sourced its educated and tech-savvy cadre from its parent body, the SIMI.

So then, who is the ‘mastermind’? Abu Bashar or Abdul Subhan Qureshi alias Tauqeer, the Osama of India?
AJIT DOVAL: In such a terror act, the actual mastermind may very well be a person who is not actually executing the terror strike or is not even making the bombs. He could be a person doing the main planning and strategizing.
VED MARWAH: We can say only about the mastermind of a certain serial blast. There can be links between various blasts but the real planner could be sitting far away in Karachi, Dubai or Kabul.
PRAKASH SINGH: It is not proper on part of the police to quickly say that they have killed the mastermind of Indian Mujahideen as Delhi Police did just hours after the encounter. The police made two arrests and these persons should be first interrogated properly to know the complete contours of the crime.

But what has prompted this local element-driven terror in India? Are Gujarat riots, which finds mention in each email sent by the IM, to blame for it?
AJIT DOVAL: I would say that SIMI started organizing itself in a big way and its underground cadre became active after POTA was lifted in December 2004. Regarding Gujarat, I would say that such riot-hit areas could have been targeted by the SIMI as a catchments’ area for new recruits.
VED MARWAH: What we need to nip this terrorism in its bud is to stop the unfortunate policy of going soft on terror where even cabinet ministers are backing SIMI. Centre-state co-operation on terror has broken down in the tenure of this government.
PRAKASH SINGH: The Gujarat riots did lead to a new evolution of terrorism in the country. But these terrorists cannot use that as a pretext to kill innocents.
(As told to Aman Sharma)