The Hindu : Front Page : Wiretap warning on Uttar Pradesh bombings went in vain

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Wednesday, Dec 26, 2007
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Wiretap warning on Uttar Pradesh bombings went in vain

Praveen Swami

Harkat operative held for strikes was under police surveillance weeks before attacks

A J&K resident was held on Monday for his alleged role in court-complex attacks
The missed warning underlines the need for a federal counter-terrorism apparatus

NEW DELHI: Sajjad Ahmad Wani, a Jammu and Kashmir resident arrested on Monday for his alleged role in last month’s court-complex bombings in Uttar Pradesh, had been placed under surveillance several weeks before the terror strikes, highly placed police sources have told The Hindu.

Investigators, the sources said, stumbled on Mr. Wani’s role as a top Harkat ul-Jihad-e-Islami organiser during an intelligence operation targeting an unrelated Lashkar-e-Taiba cell that was attempting to set up bases in Punjab and New Delhi. The police in Jammu and Kashmir then began monitoring Mr. Wani’s telephone conversations and movements.

Shortly before the bombings, the sources said, a so-far-unidentified woman phoned Mr. Wani to confirm that the explosives he had sent had arrived in Faizabad. “They used innocuous code-words like samaan [luggage] to refer to the explosives,” a senior officer involved in the investigation told The Hindu, “so, while we were suspicious, there was no real evidence on hand that would have justified making arrests.”

Based on the call, though, the Uttar Pradesh Police were able to trace Mr. Wani’s contacts in an operation which involved tracking multiple mobile phones purchased using false identity documents. The police were then able to arrest Azamgarh-based Unani doctor Mohammad Tariq and Jaunpur resident Mohammad Khalid Mujahid, who investigators say were among HuJI’s most important Uttar Pradesh-based operatives.

Officials at the Union Ministry of Home Affairs said the missed wiretap warning underlined the need for a federal counter-terrorism apparatus, an issue raised at a recent conference of Directors-General of Police in New Delhi. While the Intelligence Bureau liaises between State police forces on counter-terrorism investigations, there is no mechanism that permits real-time sharing of intelligence.

A resident of the hamlet of Kushal in Kishtwar district, Mr. Wani had studied for several years at the Dar-ul-Uloom seminary in Deoband. Police sources said he had made contact with Uttar Pradesh-based HuJI operatives during this time. Doda resident Tariq Akhtar, who studied with Mr. Wani at the Dar-ul-Uloom, has also been held for his alleged role in the court-complex bombings, which claimed 12 lives.

Investigators believe that Mr. Wani had despatched part of the explosives used in the court complex attacks to Uttar Pradesh before travelling to Faizabad to supervise the strikes. Mr. Akhtar, police claim, helped source the ammonium nitrate used to fabricate the bombs from fertilizer dealers in Jammu. A West Bengal resident, thought to have provided a second cache of explosives, remains untraced.

According to investigators, Mr. Wani had earlier arranged for several Uttar Pradesh men to train with HuJI units operating in the forests of Chhatroo, in Kishtwar. Mr. Khalid, for example, is thought have spent three months in the area in 2003. HuJI-trained operatives linked to Mr. Wani, the police say, also helped organise last year’s bombings in Varanasi, as well as a May 22 terror attack in Gorakhpur.

The former Doda-based HuJI commander, Abdul Raqeeb, who mentored both Mr. Wani and Mr. Khalid, began recruiting Uttar Pradesh seminary students and Students Islamic Movement of India members as early as 2001. Mr. Raqeeb was killed in a 2003 shootout with the Jammu and Kashmir Police, while his second-in-command, Mohammad Rizwan, is now jailed in Lucknow.

Sources in the investigation said more arrests were probable based on the interrogation of the suspects. Among the police’s priorities is determining the identity of the cell member who sent out an e-mail claiming responsibility for the bombings on behalf of the Indian Mujahideen, an unknown terror group thought to be made up of HuJI-and Lashkar-trained Islamists largely drawn from the SIMI.

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