Col R
Hariharan
Two
low-intensity improvised explosive devices (IED) exploded in two adjacent
sleeper coaches of the Bangalore – Guwahati tri-weekly super fast express just
as the train streamed into the Chennai Central station around 7.15 AM on May 1.
One young woman was killed and 14 others were wounded in the explosions. The
city waking up to May Day holiday was stunned. And national media fed on
increasingly stale diet of election news went hammer and tongs to dissect it.
But the
question, who planted the bombs in the train, still remains unanswered.
The Chennai
police (CB CID) assisted by a NSG team is investigating the blasts. Preliminary
investigation has revealed that ammonium nitrate, favoured by terrorists
because it is commonly available as a chemical fertiliser was probably used
with a timer device in the IEDs. The media called the IEDs a professional job,
leaving no doubt it was a terrorist handiwork. However, so far no terrorist
organisation has laid claim to the heinous act.
As the train
started in Bangalore, police are also looking for leads at their end. The
police both at Chennai and Bangalore are also examining CCTV footages of the
day recorded in the two stations for possible clues.
The train was
running 45 minutes late and that probably saved more lives and damage to the
train. Had it been running on time the train would have neared Nellore where
Narendra Modi, the BJP’s prime ministerial aspirant, was addressing an election
rally on that day! Already a security alert has been issued to Southern States
regarding possible terrorist attack on the Gujarat Chief Minister during his
electioneering in South India. According to railway sources, security
arrangements in the two stations in Chennai were tightened after the alert was
received.
The train was
headed for Guwahati, capital of not only Assam state but Northeast militancy as
well. The train would have passed through parts of Andhra Pradesh and Orissa
that were hunting grounds of Maoists and other Left Wing Extremist (LWE)
groups. These complications have generated a lot of speculations about the
terrorist body responsible for planting the bombs.
Despite some
spectacular ambushes of paramilitary forces by Maoists, during the run up to
the general elections their activities have been substantively restricted
thanks to the tight security arrangements beefed up by additional forces. Same
is the case in yhr Northeast where general elections have been conducted
peacefully. Moreover, North-eastern militant groups which are ethno-centric
rarely operate outside their beat. Considering this, it is reasonable to remove
both the LWE and Northeast insurgents from the list of suspected perpetrators.
And that leaves only Jihadi terrorist groups as the suspects.
In this
context, the arrest of a Sri Lankan national Mohammed Zakir Hussain in Chennai
in a joint operation by Central intelligence and state police two days before
the blast is of special interest. According to media reports, Hussain is said
to have confessed to the police of working for Pakistani intelligence. He was
on an assignment to recruit people for terrorist activities in Southern states
and circulate fake Indian currency. Based on the information provided by him
the Tamil Nadu Q Branch Police have arrested two of his associates suspected of
working for the Pakistan ISI.
The report
quoted to sources to say that Hussain had confessed he was tasked by Amir
Zubair Siddiqui, Counsellor (Visa) at the Pakistan High Commission in Colombo,
to gather information on vital installations in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. There
was another Pakistani official named Boss alias Shah involved in this
operation. Zakir said he had met the Pakistani officials many times in the past
one year and sent photographs and maps of US Consulate in Chennai and Israel
Consulate in Bangalore. He visited Chennai six times in the past one year on
fake passports. Sometimes he came here as a textile and pharma merchant. It also said that Hussain was arrested by
Singapore police for spying; he had spent three years in a prison there. He was
also detained in Bangkok, the report added.
The Hindu
quoted police sources to say that Hussain was also asked to prepare fake
passports to facilitate the arrival of two Pakistani nationals in India.
Amir Zubair
Siddiqui was also named as the handler in the case of another suspect Thamim
Ansari of Adiramapattinam in Thanjavur district apprehended in September 2012
when he was heading for the Tiruchi airport to take a flight to Colombo. Two
DVDs containing visuals of the Army Para-Gliding training and a parade of the
Army Signal Corps were seized from him. According to media reports, police
claimed that he had admitted to having video-graphed vital installations,
including the Nagapattinam Port and the Madras Regimental Centre in Wellington.
In his confession Ansari said he was instructed by at the Pakistan High
Commission in Sri Lanka, to take videos of sensitive defence installations in
India.
These would
indicate that Colombo continues to be the cockpit of Pakistan intelligence
operations targeted against India. With convenient flights to all major cities
of India and huge tourist and business traffic to and from Sri Lanka and India
and comparatively laid back attitude to security prevailing in Southern states,
it makes sense for Pakistan intelligence to use Colombo to sneak into India.
Pakistan
intelligence’s Colombo connections are nothing new. As early as 2003, terrorism
expert the late B Raman had written that since 2001 Jihadi terrorist groups of
the Al Qaeda-kind had been “paying more attention to other areas such as the
Eastern province of Sri Lanka, which has a pocket of Muslim concentration” as
well as Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. Among such groups he rated the
Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT) as one organisation which had “a definite jihadi agenda
in South India.” It was constantly looking for opportunities to build a
presence and capability for that purpose, he averred.
During the
last decade or so Pakistan had been using Colombo as a base to launch
intelligence operations to gather information on vulnerable targets in South
India. On June 18, 2004 the late B. Raman commented upon a news item from the
Colombo daily ‘The Island’ regarding Sri Lanka’s concurrence to the appointment
of Col Bashir Wali (retd.) as Pakistan High Commissioner to Sri Lanka. According
to Raman, it would be Col Wali’s second posting to Colombo. He had served there
in the 90s as the head of the Pakistani intelligence set up in the Mission.
But the
pernicious part was that during Wali’s first tenure in Colombo that Al Ummah,
the terrorist organisation of Tamil Nadu expanded its activities in Tamil Nadu
and Kerala. He had also used his close connections with the Tablighi Jamaat
(TJ) which had been helping to recruit cadres abroad for a number of Jihadi
terror groups like Lashkar-e-Tayyaba
(LeT). Probably this is what resulted in sending a number of Tamil
Muslims from Sri Lanka's Eastern Province to Karachi to study in the Binori
madrasa on scholarships provided by the TJ Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai who was
considered god father of the Taliban, Al Qaeda and the Pakistani jihadi
organisations. Later Col Wali moved to
the Pak High Commission in London. And it was during his tenure there that the
LeT set up its secret cells in UK to recruit volunteers for Jihadi terrorist
operations from amongst the Muslim community there. This ultimately led to the ban of LeT in
UK.
Raman had
written that while in Pakistan, Col. Wali used to attend regularly the annual
conventions of the LeT and assisted terrorists in Punjab and J&K. “The
training of the terrorists from Mumbai, responsible for the train blasts
in March1993, was allegedly organised by Col Wali on behalf of the ISI in
association with Dawood Ibrahim, the leader of the criminal mafia and now a
designated as an international terrorist because of his linkages with Al Qaeda
and the LeT.
So it would be
reasonable to conclude that there could be a Pakistan intelligence link based
in Colombo to the Chennai train blasts. Whether the Indian Mujahideen or any
other module of Pakistan intelligence was involved in it or not is not clear.
Perhaps we will get to know it in due course.
(Col.
R Hariharan, a retired Military Intelligence specialist on South Asia, served
as the head of intelligence of the Indian Peace Keeping Force in Sri Lanka
1987-90.He is associated with the South Asia Analysis Group and the Chennai
Centre for China Studies. E- mail:colhari@yahoo.com Blog:
www.colhariharan.org)
Courtesy: South Asia Analysis Group Paper No. 5695 dated May 2, 2014 http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/node/1511
Chennai Centre for China Studies C3S Paper No. 2092 dated May 2, 2014 http://www.c3sindia.org/india/3988
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