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THE NATION:
TERRORISM
HIDEOUTS
OF TERROR
By
Sayantan Chakravarty and Amarnath K. Menon
The
Red Fort is more than just another imposing Mughal monument. It is a symbol
of independent India, the place from where the prime minister addresses
the nation on August 15. On the night of December 22, gunfire was heard
inside the fort which also serves as an army garrison. Two jawans and
a civilian lay dead. There was no sign of the intruders. A stunned nation
reeled under the sheer audacity of the attack, the handiwork of the Lashkar-e-Toiba
(let).
Interception
of calls by suspected ISI operatives led the police to Ashfaq Ahmed in
east Delhi. Ashfaq was arrested on December 25 and he led the police to
Abu Shamaal, one of the terrorists who participated in the attack. A police
party led by ACP Rajbir Singh raided the hideout in Okhla at 5 a.m. on
December 26 and killed Shamaal in an encounter.
 |
| Lifeless
body of Fort raider Shamaal |
Ashfaq
is a Pakistani from Abbotabad, NWFP, who entered Kupwara in August 1999,
moved to Delhi in July last year and set himself up as the local let coordinator.
He arranged a safe house for Shamaal and three others who entered India
from Pakistan between December 7 and 19.
The relative
ease with which Ashfaq facilitated the let's Delhi operations points to
the networks of support the ISI has created throughout India. Its tentacles
reach out to drugs, hawala, illicit arms, counterfeit money and even local
politics. Outside Kashmir, Delhi and Hyderabad have emerged as key operational
bases of terrorism.
DELHI
New Fears in the Old City
The walled
city of shahjahanabad. The Jama Masjid area. It's a little island with
many names and an even greater number of stories. Every alley in this
northern enclave of the national capital has had its date with history.
These days it is keeping its tryst with a somewhat less romantic destiny:
terror.
The teeming
ghetto opposite the Red Fort is a welter of clogged streets, bustling
bazaars and shady hotels. It is also a convenient sanctuary for jehadis.
Throughout 2000, agencies ranging from the Delhi Police to the Central
Bureau of Investigation (CBI) arrested Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)
agents, many of them Pakistanis, with strong links in Delhi's Old City.
- In January
2000, the special cell of the Delhi Police arrested Pakistani Abdul
Rashid and two associates. They had with them a kilo of RDX, along with
timers and detonators. The explosive material was hidden in a consignment
of toys brought from Pakistan.
- The same
month, Karan Gohar, a resident of Lahore who had been deported on three
occasions from India, was arrested with 3 kg of RDX and Rs 8 lakh "worth"
of fake Indian currency. He also had 96 litres of acetic anhydride,
essential for refining heroin.
- In February,
the Special Cell and CBI jointly apprehended Pakistani Hazi Gul Khan
and an Afghan accomplice. The two had smuggled in 22 kg of heroin from
Pakistan in huge degchis (cooking utensils).
- In September,
Mohammed Riyaz, a Pakistani, was arrested while passing on defence documents
to an ISI operative.
- In October,
Latif Mohammed Bhatt, a Hizbul Mujahideen district commander, was caught
in the Jama Masjid area with 5.4 kg of RDX.
The list
is far from exhaustive. What is common to every arrested person though
is a link or a safe house in the walled city. The Union Home Ministry
estimates there are some 11,000 Pakistanis staying illegally in India,
of which 85 have disappeared from Delhi. Of course, not all are involved
in subversive activities, but a sizeable section of those who seem to
find their way to select urban ghettos of the city (see map).
The Jama
Masjid area, for instance, has a 95 per cent Muslim population. Pakistani
agents-and increasingly even Afghans-find it easy to mingle into the local
community. They use Delhi as a base to move into Kashmir and, occasionally,
Uttar Pradesh. While most local residents are oblivious of the criminals
in their midst, a few become co-conspirators in a game that covers everything
from explosives to narcotics to fake currency. If Yamuna Pushta, adjoining
Mahatma Gandhi's samadhi, is a Bangladeshi migrant stronghold whose "criminal
potential", say the police, "hasn't been fully exploited by
the ISI", Okhla and Nizamuddin are full of cheap "guest houses"
and one-roomed tenements servicing shades of dubiousness.
Says ACP
Rajbir Singh: "These areas are the real challenge." DCP (Central)
Uday Sahay, who polices the Jama Masjid region, calls it "a place
with a complex variety of crimes".
With local
clerics prone to fanning religious passions, Shahjahanabad is always a
high-pressure zone. The police have found it difficult to build a network
of sources here and, for the moment, is keeping watch on three or four
"traders" with a criminal history who, between them, "control
1,000 anti-social elements".
The task
is daunting. There are guest houses in Ballimaran and Churiwalan reserved
exclusively for Pakistanis and Afghans. There are the "Old Money
Changers" that are covers for hawala operators, some with ISI links.
And there are the day-trippers to Dubai who play couriers for crime syndicates.
Terrorism has successfully linked itself to routine criminality. Which
is why fighting one is impossible without confronting the other.
HYDERABAD
Climate of Jehad
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| Protest
rallies such as this glorify terrorism to keep passions inflamed in
Hyderabad |
Seven-year-old
Saleem came dressed as told. He covered his face and brought along his
new gift-a toy Kalashnikov-to join the rally. The December 6 protest rally
is an annual feature of Hyderabad but it is also illustrates how the jehadi
mindset takes hold of a boy's mind. He is told to prepare for a holy war
to rebuild a mosque at Ayodhya, and terrorism is glorified by toy guns.
That's how the Darsgah Jehad-o-Shahadat (DJS) keeps passions inflamed
in the bylanes of the old city. History blends with propaganda to create
an explosive cocktail.
No wonder
there is a section ready to play host to those carrying the real weapons
in their jehad. "This is quite disconcerting and the terrorist threat
is serious," admits Police Commissioner P. Ramulu. Perhaps more serious
than the nihilism of the People's War Group.
For the
itinerant terrorist, Hyderabad is a haven. There are plenty of safe houses
both in the old city and pockets in west Hyderabad. The security of these
enabled Mohammed Ishtiaq, a let activist from Pakistan to cultivate relationships,
marry a Hyderabadi girl and pass off as a local for three years.
Ishtiaq
may have stayed that way longer but for a tip-off from the Delhi police
after blasts in the capital in the summer of 1998. The Hyderabad Police
tracked him down and arrested two other Pakistanis, Mohammed Shafeeq and
Farooq Ahmed-both trained by the let-with a large cache of weapons and
18 kg of RDX.
The alarm
bells first rang in November 1992, when Additional Superintendent of Police
G. Krishna Prasad and his gunman were shot dead in the labyrinthine Bhavani
Colony while raiding a terrorist hideout. The militants had links with
the Mujahuddin-e-Islam of Kashmir which in turn was handled by the ISI.
Subsequently, activists of outfits like Iqwan-ul-Muslimeen and Tanzeen
Islahul-Muslimeen developed Hyderabad as a major terrorist centre for
the ISI.
"The
isi strategy was to create several modules with non-descript names and
independent of one another to put us off any strong leads," says
a senior police official. Later, they secured local recruits and sent
them to Pakistan for training. They included a wanted killer Abu Omer,
who returned to India with a Pakistani passport and attempted to kill
former Mumbai mayor Milind Vaidya in March 1999 before the police caught
him at a guest house in Lucknow.
Hyderabad
has been targeted by the ISI because of its communal mix and strategic
location. It is both the hub from where militants head for get-aways in
contiguous Maharashtra and Karnataka and the hide-outs of others who carry
out operations elsewhere. Activists of the Al Umma, responsible for the
Coimbatore blasts of February 1998, were provided shelter in the Secunderabad
cantonment.
What baffles
the police is the frequency with which terrorist facilitators change labels.
Often, dormant groups are activated for specific missions. "We can't
take any action as we lack evidence," admits a top official. At best
the special task force for ISI activities can monitor jehadi groups. But
there is no way it can anticipate when impressionable boys like Saleem
turn activist and start harbouring terrorists.
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