Top 5 IM leaders moved to Karachi after Oct ’08

On August 4,2009 Sameer Ali had replied,“Your friend that you asked about reached home yesterday.”

Who these people in Karachi were who were wanting to work for a terrorist network being operated by Syed Abdur Rehman Pasha,who is now on India’s most wanted list of terrorists,is still not clear though there is anecdotal evidence from the interrogation of people like the most recently arrested Pakistan trained Indian Mujahideen operative,Salman Ahmed,that at least five top IM leaders who were in India till October 2008 are now in Karachi.

While prior to the November 26,2008 Mumbai attacks there were indications that the LeT and the IM had some overlapping linkages,the NIA’s interrogation of Headley has put a new spin suggesting that Pasha’s network may be allied to terrorists operating in Afghanistan like the al-Qaeda.

For instance,one of the accused in the IM’s southern India network,Ahmed Bava,arrested in Mangalore on October 3,2008 in a police crackdown on the network,following the Batla House encounter in New Delhi,told interrogators that Riyaz Bhatkal,co-founder of the IM,and his brother Iqbal had made efforts to buy a fishing boat at Malpe near Mangalore on September 18,a day before the Batla House encounter occurred.

According to Bava’s account,the Bhatkal brothers quizzed a boat owner on a wide range of capabilities of a boat and negotiated a price in the range of Rs 20 lakh for it. They told Bava that the boat would be used for smuggling gold. According to police sources,who have questioned the boat owner,the prospective buyers never returned to close the deal.

Seen in the context of the NIA’s interrogation of Headley in June 2010 where the American states that the LeT was trying to get a boat to transport the 26/11 attackers to India as early as September 2008,this effort to buy a boat in Mangalore by the IM operatives is being seen as a possible instance of the IM pitching in for the LeT for the Mumbai attacks.

According to the executive summary of the NIA’s interrogation of Headley,both the LeT and Pasha — who is linked to al-Qaeda elements like Illyas Kashmiri — were running parallel Karachi setups for operations in India.

“The aim of the Karachi setup (Pasha’s) is to launch operations into India using militants of Indian origin. Pasha has been in the past involved in some attacks in India. The Karachi setup of LeT aims to launch boys from Maharashtra and Gujarat into India using sea routes. As per Headley’s assessment this is being done by using their fishermen network and their boats,’’ says the NIA report.

Headley like Pasha was drifting away from the LeT and towards Illyas Kashmiri and the al-Qaeda when he sent his July 20 email inquiring about Pasha — since the Lashkar was lying low after the 26/11 Mumbai attacks.

From the evidence of the leads being chased by investigators into the July 13 triple bomb attack on Mumbai,it is fairly clear,though not overtly stated,that the focus is again on picking up lost threads of what is now known as the Indian Mujahideen network — from as far back as the 2002 attack on the American Center in Kolkata,involving gangster Aftab Ansari and IM co-founder Sadique Sheikh.

The growing theory is that the old Indian Mujahideen network is being utilised by hydra heads new to India. Only hard evidence will tell.