The missing Link

Basheer, who would be in his mid-40s now, has a post-graduate diploma in aeronautical engineering, and had worked for a while at New Delhi’s Safarjung airport before he became an accused in terror attacks in Mumbai.

Intelligence sources say he had his arms and explosives training in the 1980s at a camp run by the Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI) of Pakistan in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), and was an important mover of what is called the K-2 deal (convergence of the Kashmir and Khalistan issues), which SIMI brokered with the Canada-based International Sikh Youth Federation (ISYF).

In 1990, he became a whole time SIMI worker and, intelligence sources say, went to Pakistan more than once. By 1992 there was a warrant out for him in connection with a terror plot in Ahmedabad. The next year, soon after the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts, Basheer fled to Saudi Arabia. Though a key suspect, the extent of his actual role in that blast is still to be established.

But his pivotal role in the blasts at Mumbai’s Mulund in March 2003 came through after a key accused, Noor Mohammed Abdul Ansari, confessed it was Basheer who organised the funds and logistics for that attack. Basheer’s name had also figured as one of those who helped organise a band of Indian Islamic zealots based in the Gulf who went to Iraq to join jehadis fighting US forces.