Bashir: link from Hyderabad to Ahmedabad

Mufti Abu Bashir of Azamgarh, who was arrested by Gujarat Police in connection with the Ahmedabbad blasts, spent 18 months teaching Arabic at the Jamait Ul Sheikh Al Maududi at Pahadisharif in Hyderabad.

Abu Bashir, 26, a native of Beenapara village in Sarai Meer area, Azamgarh, belongs to a poor family which survived on his earning as a madrasa teacher, police sources said. Bashir’s father is paralysed and his mother is a housewife. Bashir is the eldest of five brothers, two of whom work in Delhi and Mumbai. The other two brothers and a sister study in the local madrasa.

Police say Bashir came in contact with SIMI when he was in Hyderabad and became its active member. He came home about a month ago and did not go back. He told his parents that his madrasa was shut for a vacation, but the police suspect he came back because of mounting pressure of security agencies on SIMI activists.

Station Officer of Sarai Meer police station Kamleshwar Singh, who conducted a search at Bashir’s house on Saturday noon, said, “The family has a below-poverty-line ration card and no means to run the kitchen. I found a few thousand rupees lying with Bashir’s mother and she told us that her eldest son had brought the money when he returned from Hyderabad.”

Bashir came to Hyderabad to teach at the madrasa that was established by Maulana Abdul Aleem Islahi. Hyderabad Police say Islahi is an activist and known sympathiser of SIMI. His son Mohtasin Billa was arrested recently after another terror suspect revealed his name. Maulana Abdul Aleem Islahi also hails from Azamradh, according to Hyderabad Police.

So when Bashir accepted the invitation by Islahi to teach at the Jamait Ul Sheikh Al Maududi, there was blip on the city police’s radar. However, police could not gather much about him except for the fact that he was from Azamgarh and used to hobnob with SIMI activists there, and that he was not involved in any other activity except teaching Arabic here.

Police could only keep a watch over him but during that stint at the Jamait Ul Sheikh Al Maududi, they noted a couple of times that he interacted with Safdar Nagori, the general secretary of SIMI, who was arrested in Indore in March 2008.

“Bashir left Hyderabad sometime in January 2007 and returned to Azamgarh. He was quite close to the Islahi family,” Hyderabad Police Commissioner Prasada Rao said on Saturday. But the family says he came home just last month.