Is ICS another name of SIMI?
INVESTIGATIONS INTO the Varanasi serial blasts are pointing the needle of suspicion towards Bangladesh?s infamous Islamic Chattra Shibir, controlled by none other than SIMI leaders in hiding.
INVESTIGATIONS INTO the Varanasi serial blasts are pointing the needle of suspicion towards Bangladesh’s infamous Islamic Chattra Shibir, controlled by none other than SIMI leaders in hiding.
The leads provided by some Bangladeshi militants arrested by the Kolkata police, which were passed on to the UP police, instantly bring the Jaunpur and Azamgarh units of ICS under close scrutiny.
Also, the Varanasi blast pattern matches perfectly with bombs set off by SIMI cadres between 2000 to 2001 in Kanpur, Lucknow, Mau, Faizabad, Qasai Bara near Agra Cantt, Jalgaon and Hyderabad.
“Also, no other outfit has the expertise better than the SIMI in using ammonium nitrate to deadly effect,” says a highly placed intelligence source.
Despite a ban, the outfit is quite active with the entire leadership and cadre making it to the ICS in a big way.
The presence of ICS in Jaunpur was traced last year following the blast in Shramjivi Express.
Some of the conspirators tracked down in West Bengal had spoken about the increased influence of ICS in certain madarsas in UP and Bihar. A terrorist Ghulam Yazadani, another Bangla militant in Kolkata police net, had divulged that ICS cadres were planning a big move to create communal tension in UP.
The input was promptly passed on to the UP police but it was overlooked.
Another surprise revelation was about the SIMI cadres landing in Dhaka and Chukhi region for rigorous trainings.
Those traced in Bangadesh included SIMI’s former state president Mohd Aamir and his cousin Mohd Salman. Another ‘Ansar’ cadre of SIMI Mohd Rehan reached Dhaka from Dubai in a ‘Jamaat’ (religious delegation) sent by the ICS.
“Most of the SIMI leaders are either in Bangladesh or West Bengal from where they command ICS units in the state,” said the source, adding that some recent arrests of Bangla militants indicated that SIMI had retrieved most of
the lost ground in the state through ICS.
At present, the investigating agencies are putting their best foot forward to pin-point the locations of certain ‘missing’ SIMI leaders and cadres vis-a-vis the Varanasi blasts.
