The arrest and interrogation of Lashkar-e-Toiba-linked Nasir Tadiyandavede,the prime accused in the July 25,2008,Bangalore serial blasts have revealed intricate linkages between several key radical Islamists accused in acts of terrorism seen around the country since 2006. Apart from throwing light on half a dozen crimes committed in his home state of Kerala,the arrest of Nasir Tadiyandavede has revealed that key former SIMI leaders,members of the Indian Mujahideen and Nasirs own group working behind the facade of a Sufi organisation Noorisa Tariqat often crossed paths and shared notes on their activities. The loosely knit network of radical Islamists spread around the country,with the encouragement of external terrorist outfits like the Lashkar-e-Toiba,are linked to a series of blasts that occurred around the country between 2006 and 2008. The interrogation of Nasir Tadiyandavede,33,a native of Kerala has revealed that he met people such as Abdul Subhan Qureshi alias Taukeer,a former SIMI leader from Mumbai linked to the planning of the Jaipur and Ahmedabad blasts of 2008,and Riyaz Bhatkal ,a native of coastal Karnataka,a former Mumbai gangster and alleged co-founder of the Indian Mujahideen outfit linked to the Jaipur,Ahmedabad,and New Delhi blasts. The different groups were largely working separately but they also did collaborate and share resources and ideology on occasions, sources looking at Nasir Tadiyandavedes role in the Islamic terror matrix in the country said. The disparate groups around the country all came up after the banned Students Islamic Movement of India split vertically on ideology with the hardliners going their separate way from the moderates in 2006 a week before the July 11 serial train blasts in Mumbai following a meeting in Ujjain,sources said. Nasir has revealed in the course of his interrogation that in 2007 he attended a meeting organised in Aluva in Kerala that featured Abdul Subhan Qureshi alias Taukeer,often described as one of the prime figures in the organising of hardliners in the country. Taukeer is alleged to have been a key trainer at underground SIMI training camps held at Wagamon in Kerala in 2006 and is believed to have narrowly escaped a raid carried out by intelligence agencies in Indore in 2007 that lead to the arrest of the head of the hard line SIMI faction Safdar Nagori and nine others. According to information provided by Nasir during the recent investigations he had also met on occasions with a couple of the SIMI members arrested at Indore in 2007 Shaduly a Kerala resident and Ansar Nadwi a former student of the Nadwat-ul-Ulema in UP. Nasir has also revealed that he had a meeting with the alleged Indian Mujahideen co-founder Riyaz Bhatkal in Mallapuram in 2008 where Riyaz Bhatkal was introduced as Rashid Khan by a man called Shuhaib who investigators believe is another key former SIMI activist from Kerala who has escaped the country. At the meeting with Riyaz Bhatkal the preparation of long duration timers for use in bombs was discussed and Abdul Sattar alias E T Zainuddin,57,a co-accused in the Bangalore blasts case was tasked with preparing them,sources said. It seems the Indian Mujahideen and Nasirs outfit were working in parallel at this point of time on bombings in Surat and Bangalore. Some of the timers meant for the Surat blasts were diverted for use in Bangalore by Nasir, sources said. Incidentally,nine bombs with timer settings of approximately 36 hours went of in Bangalore on July 25,2008,killing one person and injuring a dozen while all of the 21 bombs in Surat fitted with the same timers failed to explode on July 27.
