SIMI nat'l secy linked to 11/7 blasts

Interrogation of a few 11/7 accused had established Nagori’s close links with the joint SIMI-Lashkar team that carried out the bombings, reports Abhishek Sharan.

The interrogation of SIMI national secretary general, 38-year-old Safdar Nagori, and his long-time deputy, software engineer Shibli Peedical Abdul (26), is expected to establish clearly the exact nature of their involvement in the bombings that killed 187 rush hour commuters in seven Mumbai locals on July 11, 2006.

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Interrogation of a few 11/7 accused, including Ehtesham Siddiqui, a former Maharashtra SIMI secretary and one of the five known Indian bombers, had established Nagori’s close links with the joint SIMI-Lashkar team that carried out the bombings. This was confirmed to Hindustan Times by two top Maharashtra police officers who had worked on the case.

According to these officers, the 13 accused in the 11/7 case had stopped short of naming Nagori as a co-conspirator. This resulted in the police not naming him in the chargesheet that was submitted towards the end of 2006. However, circumstantial evidence and tell-tale signs clearly point to Nagori’s role in the bombings, the officers said.

“Nagori’s interrogation could now reveal if he had given logistical support to the 11/7 accused, which seems probable. We did not name him because none of the 13 accused that we arrested threw any direct light on his role,” A.N. Roy, Maharashtra DGP, and the man who was Mumbai police chief at the time of the blasts, told HT. Roy had supervised the case personally.

K.P. Raghuvanshi, Additional DGP, Railways, who was then chief of Maharashtra’s Anti Terrorism Squad, told HT: “Ehtesham Siddiqui had revealed to us that he had attended a secret meeting convened by Nagori and Shibli in Ujjain around a month before the July blasts. They had discussed terror plans, but we do not know what else was discussed. But a decision was taken to target middle-level Hindu extremist leaders. Nagori was in Mumbai, at Ehtesham Siddiqui’s flat in Amrapali Society in Mira Road in the first week of July 2006.”

Sources said this is the same flat at which a few of the Pakistani Lashkar bombers also stayed.