In January this year, following his chance arrest in the Hubli region of Karnataka, Raziuddin Nasir, 21, a Hyderabad resident and a suspected terror operative, began dropping the names of several key fugitive terrorist leaders from around the world.One of the names Nasir, the son of a cleric facing conspiracy charges in Gujarat, mentioned and claimed association with was that of Safdar Nagori, leader of a radical unit of the proscribed Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), who was arrested during the crackdown in Indore on Thursday.Nasir claimed to be working with Nagori and Adnan, alias Hafeez Mullah — another radical SIMI leader from Bijapur in Karnataka who was also arrested last week — to train and arm youths recruited to their extremist ideology in southern India to carry out terror attacks.While there were possibilities of associations with fugitive terror suspects from Hyderabad, one name that Nasir mentioned, however, foxed investigators.Amid admissions of being trained at terror camps in Pakistan, Nasir told interrogators that he and his associates were in touch with Mullah Omar, the fugitive Taliban leader linked to Osama bin Laden, who controlled Afghanistan prior to 2001. He specifically told interrogators, “Nagori Mullah Omar ka fauj bana raha tha (Nagori was building an army for Mullah Omar)”. Nasir also stated during a narco analysis test that the group interacted with a Taliban ideologue.But investigators from the Corps of Detectives (CoD) in Bangalore who have over the past two months been probing a rag-tag group featuring medical and engineering students that was being assembled in Karnataka, allegedly by Nagori and Adnan, are yet to unearth any evidence to prove contacts between leaders of the group and the Taliban.“Nasir and the others have definitely been inspired by the radical ideology of Mullah Omar and the Taliban, but there is no evidence of two-way contacts,” said a senior police officer supervising investigations for the CoD in Karnataka. Based on its investigations across Karnataka and Kerala, the CoD has so far arrested seven alleged SIMI operatives, apart from Nasir, on charges of conspiracy to wage war against the country. The police have alleged that the group held three key meetings in the northern part of Karnataka and plotted to attack tourist spots in Goa.Nagori, Adnan and Shibli — a computer engineer originally from Kerala who was living in Bangalore and allegedly supporting SIMI activities — who were all arrested during the Indore crackdown, were listed as most wanted by the CoD for being the top leadership of the group assembled in Karnataka.While Nagori, who is linked to the 2006 Malegaon blasts, has been in hiding for a long time, Adnan and Shibli had disappeared after the first set of arrests of Nasir and his friend Asadullah Abubacker became public on January 26.“The arrest of Nagori, Adnan and Shibli has brought the conspiracy investigations in Karnataka that began after the arrest of Nasir to a full circle,” said a senior officer.
