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Soon, Kerala saw a rash of unprecedented extremist activity, especially in its north. The kidnapping and disappearance of free thinking Muslim cleric Chekannur Maulavi, the cigarette-bombs once regularly hurled at village movie theatres, the deadly pipe bombs; all these traced the state’s emerging fundamentalist picture. SIMI was among the key suspects, but its role was never conclusively proven.

No SIMI man had been convicted in Kerala for any terror strike since the ban, and many of its leaders are now high profile leaders of other Islamic outfits, some they founded and others they penetrated. They include P. Koya and E. Aboobacker, Supreme Council Members of the innocuously named National Development Front (NDF), the outfit that state intelligence claims to be Kerala’s most elusive and dangerous communal outfit. The current state Amir of the JeI, Arif Ali, and high profile community leaders like Sheikh Mohammed Karakunnu were top SIMI men, as were several others in a slew of lesser Muslim organisations.

In politics, the CPI(M)’s revolutionary poster boy for Muslims in north Kerala in the last Assembly poll, K.T. Jaleel, was an important SIMI leader.

But a couple of years ago, the state Government, in its submission to the tribunal examining the legality of the SIMI ban, had underlined the more worrying portends. It said SIMI men had dispersed into at least a dozen front outfits in the state and that it has developed links with the Lashkar-e–Toiba. The submission also stressed that several of these front outfits were being used to spread ‘‘extremist religious ideas’’ among the youth and that many operated under such labels as ‘‘counselling and guidance centres working for behavioural change.’’

One of SIMI’s front outfits under the intelligence scanner is in central Kerala, founded by a former SIMI leader in the state, who is also the brother-in-law of a top NDF leader. This outfit is in the publishing space, mostly printing and marketing Islamic publications. Intelligence sources, however, maintain that it has also been printing and distributing incendiary leaflets and notices on the sly for both SIMI and the NDF, mostly aiming non-resident Keralites working in Gulf countries.

Others, like the recently floated Islamic Students Association (ISA) aiming to ‘‘tap the campuses for the energy to grow,’’ has a liberal sprinkling of former SIMI men. ‘‘But we have nothing to do with SIMI, we are different,’’ insists its secretary, E.K. Naufal.

The seven-year-old ban has not prevented former SIMI men from getting together, rarely getting noticed for it. Some 25 of its top former men had met in Kozhikode in 2005, five SIMI men indoctrinating a bunch of raw recruits were hauled up in Ernakulam, regular get-togethers of SIMI men still happen in places like Thrissur, Malappuram, Kozhikode and elsewhere under cover of the paper outfits, say sources.

Intelligence sources say the SIMI may not dare an obvious regrouping in the state even under the label of front outfits, but it is far from withering away.

Apparently it has hardcore sleeper cells in many organisations.

There are two distinct ex-SIMI groups active in the state. One is holding on to the outfit’s traditional pro-Iran line and the other comprising the independent conservatives. There may also be a third pro-Saudi Arabia group as well but it is an insignificant player.

The organisation may be banned but its funding sources are alive. When police raided the SIMI's state headquarters in Kozhikode soon after the ban in 2001, the seizures made included account books that showed a massive inflow of money from the Gulf countries through the hawala route.

‘‘We have already estimated that the state now has at least Rs 10,000 crore coming in every year from the Gulf by the hawala route,’’ says Kerala’s intelligence chief, Additional DGP Jacob Punnoose.

Where that money might be headed is still not clear.

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