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In UP, terror has govt patron
With charges as serious as treason, masterminding the March 16 riots in Kanpur, state SIMI president Mohd Aamir would always have been a dream catch.
With charges as serious as treason, masterminding the March 16 riots in Kanpur, state SIMI president Mohd Aamir would always have been a dream catch.
And so it was that after being on the run for five years, the top militant surfaced in a luxury car on April 24 outside the Becongunj police station. With a celebrated politician in tow, the most-wanted man sat with senior police officers to plan his surrender.
Hours later, everyone concluded that a surrender at a police station was damaging for the police's image. So Aamir spent the night enjoying police hospitality and surrendered before a metropolitan magistrate (VI) the next day.
Finally, the man who spent last year in a terror sanctuary in Bangladesh slipped unnoticed into barrack six of Kanpur Jail.
Almost in a similar manner, district SIMI president Salman Ahmed and Hizbul Mujahideen militant Mohd Zubair secured bails and disappeared without trace. Both were named for instigating the March 16 riots and executing serial blasts. The conducive climate for these surrenders was provided by the state government, which refused to accept the extension of ban on SIMI that the Centre had proposed. The surrender was planned in New Delhi in March when the government first showed signs of going soft on SIMI.
Sources say Aamir was asked to get in touch with a political leader. The leader, in turn, left it to the police to finalise the surrender modalities. At the police's advice, Aamir surrendered in a Kanpur riot case (no 20/01), in which he is the prime accused among 37. A non bailable warrant was issued to help him escape the spotlight.
The case against Aamir is based on the confession of Hizbul militants Mumtaz Ahmed, Wasif Syed, Ghulam Gilani who had set off the blasts. They testified that Aamir had sent them for training across the border. After they returned, Aamir gave them the explosives and equipment to execute the blasts. The police then fiercely guarded Aamir's surrender. Never bringing it on records. They did not even try to seek his remand in the last month or so, which had shocked the intelligence agencies.
