NEW DELHI: The banned
SIMI dropped the ‘I’ for India (Students Islamic Movement of India) from its name as it sought to regroup as ‘SIM’ — which then became the Indian Mujahideen — SIMI leader Abdus Subhan Qureshi has told the
National Investigation Agency (
NIA).
The reworked
SIM was a result of a crackdown and was intended to connect with leaders of globally known terror outfits. Qureshi, 47, who was arrested in January, is sometimes referred to as India’s master jihadi organiser. He was entrusted with the task to contact Taliban leader Mullah Omar as ‘SIM’ believed in the outfit’s advocacy of an Islamic caliphate.
The connections between SIMI and IM were organic, as the cadres and leaders were often common. Qureshi even made attempts to reach Mullah Omar but failed.
“We had a three-day meeting from July 7 to 9, 2006, in the farmhouse of Kamruddin Nagori in Ujjain. Safdar Nagori, his brother Kamruddin, Aamil Parvez, Iqrar Sheikh, Akbar Baig, Shibly, Hafeez Hussain, Ehthesham Siddiqui, Shahbaz Hindi and I were present there. We discussed that Shahid Badr Falahi had failed to take the organisation forward so we needed to form a new organisation and get in touch with world mujahideen groups which were working for khilafat (restoration of Islamic model of state),” interrogation report of Qureshi, exclusively accessed by TOI, said. He was questioned by NIA last month.
At a follow-up meeting at Castle Rock near Hubli (Karnataka) in October 2007, Shahbaz Hindi was declared the chief of SIM. They even decided to have a permanent training camp in Nepal but it could not be finalised due to shortage of funds.
The organisation, believe NIA officers, became IM which was responsible for a series of terror attacks on several cities from 2007 onwards till an inter-state police and intelligence operation broke the group.
Qureshi, a native of Rampur (UP), travelled to MP, Hyderabad, Karnataka, Kerala, Gujarat, Bihar, West Bengal and Chhattisgarh to garner support for the organisation and collect funds.
“We organised various training camps in Karnataka, MP, Kerala and Gujarat which were attended by the top leadership including Hindi, Nagori and others, in which speeches were followed by shooting practice and other physical activities,” Qureshi told his interrogators.
Investigators believe SIM later became IM in which SIMI’s role was to facilitate blasts.
Agencies claim, he was involved in the activities of SIMI and IM and was in touch with Pakistan-based terror leaders.
It is suspected that during the last 10 years, Qureshi recruited many cadres for IM and provided logistics for many blasts.
