SIMI'S SECOND COMING

As a young Muslim leader in the IT sector in Bangalore, Yahya was in an organisation called the Muslim Information Technology Professionals Association (MITA), created on the lines of informal right wing and other socio-religious groups in companies around the world.

Around May 2007, Yahya, a father of three children, was forced to leave his company after he was allegedly found stealing software to create products for a company he was secretly running on his own from Dubai.

There is now another, darker side emerging to Yahya Kammukutty as he stands in the centre of an investigation in Karnataka into an alleged attempt to rebuild a network of the banned Students Islamic Movement of India.

Yahya’s contact details feature in the list of a total of 32 men in the age group of 20 to 30, who attended three secret meetings in northern Karnataka in the second half of 2007, allegedly to plot Terror attacks.

So far eight people, including Yahya and his friend Syed Sameer, an electrical contractor and another Bangalore resident, have been arrested from the groups that met at Castle Rock on the Karnataka-Goa border, a farmhouse and a dargah in north Karnataka. The Karnataka Police have identified all eight as active members of SIMI.

While SIMI’s footprints, often in collusion with that of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Toiba, have been seen in several major terror attacks in India since the outfit came into existence in 1977 in Uttar Pradesh, even after the 2001 proscription, the outfit has never until now been identified as being a dangerous presence in Karnataka.

Since being banned, the outfit has been organising students under various alter egos in order to work around the ban, especially in the coastal and northern parts of Karnataka. Organisations like the Karnataka Forum for Dignity, and various forums for young professionals, are frequently on intelligence scanners as possible screening grounds for the recruitment of dedicated cadre for SIMI.

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