City caught in terror crossfire
Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) chief Hafiz Mohammad Saeed considers taking back Hyderabad along with Junagarh and Kashmir from India, the unfinished agenda of Partition of the country in 1947.
Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) chief Hafiz Mohammad Saeed considers taking back Hyderabad along with Junagarh and Kashmir from India, the unfinished agenda of Partition of the country in 1947.
LeT patron had declared on many occasions that it is long cherished desire to see these erstwhile princely states as part of Pakistan. Therefore, Hyderabad had long been on the terror agenda of LeT.
It resulted in heated communal environment in the city as well. Hyderabad has a long history of tit-for-tat assassination attempts on communal leaders of fundamentalist parties.
Azam Gauri, a Student Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) member, played an important role in the first jehadi terror strike on the anniversary of the Babri Masjid demolition on December 6, 1993, when the seven trains were simultaneously by Dr Jalees Ansari led module.
In December 2010, intelligence agencies had furnsihed a list of 31 terrorists who were absconding. Out of them, 19 were from the Indian Mujaheedin (IM).
Abdul Aziz Gidda, a former SIMI member and originally a resident of Hyderabad, now frequents between between Karachi and the UAE. He is now one of main recruiters of LeT from the city. Another terror operative from city was Shahid Bilal, who organised an attack on the special task force office of Andhra police in 2005. Shahid Bilal was later killed in Pakistan in 2007.
The harvest of hatred resulted in retaliatory terror strikes by right wing extremists and jahadi terrorists in quick succession. On May 18, 2007, Mecca Masjid was attacked by the right wing extremists and in its retaliation, Indian Mujahideen carried out twin blasts on August 25 the same year. That was the last time terror visited city before the twin strike on Thursday.
