The Maharashtra Anti-Terror Squad (ATS) has got in touch with their Madhya Pradesh counterparts to get custody of the top SIMI leaders led by Safdar Nagori soon after the present police remand expires on April 11. The ATS wants to unravel the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) network in the state as SIMI activists are reported to have acted as logistics suppliers in terror attacks in Maharashtra.Top Maharashtra official told The Sunday Express that Nagori would be arrested by the ATS as he is wanted in a terror incident in Mumbai. According to this official, Nagori always acted as an ideologue of the pan-Islamic organisation and did not directly take part in terror attacks. In other words, according to this official, SIMI general secretary Nagori was akin to Jaish-e-Mohammed’s Masood Azhar, who began as an ideologue of the Harkat-ul-Ansar group.While the state police suspect that SIMI activists would have gone under cover after the Indore arrests, Nagori and his other functionaries would come useful in understanding the links between SIMI and other pan-Islamic terror groups like the al Qaeda and others based in Pakistan. First using Babri Masjid demolition and then 2002 Gujarat riots, Ujjain-born Nagori has been inciting Muslim youth all over India to go for weapon training across the border via Nepal or Bangladesh route. SIMI’s Faisal Sheikh, prime accused in 7/11 blasts, was trained with others in Pakistan by LeT. He kept in touch with terror group’s commander Azam Cheema to cause mayhem in Mumbai.During his interrogation, Maharashtra SIMI general secretary Ehtesham Siddiqui revealed that his group was constantly in touch with Cheema for money and weapon supplies. The Maharashtra Police seek to unravel the Malegoan blasts’ plot through questioning of Nagori and his brother Kamruddin. On December 21, 2006, the Mumbai ATS had nailed nine SIMI activists for trying to provoke communal violence by targeting the Malegoan mosque with four bomb blasts during Shab-e-Baraat festival. SIMI, in fact, has Mumbai in crosshairs since the Ghatkopar blasts in 2002.
