Indian Homeland Security Watch

ajtr

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More explosives recovered in Bangalore

PTI | Bangalore

Some explosive materials were recovered from near a gate of Chinnaswamy stadium -- close to the site of two low intensity blasts -- a few hours after an unexploded crude bomb
was detected at MG Road area of the city this morning, police said.

"Besides the unexploded bomb, found some 150 metres away from the stadium, some explosive materials were also found near gate number one," Police Commissioner Shankar Bidari told reporters here.

The explosive materials were concealed in a flex column and did not have a detonator or timer, he said.

"We discovered it while searching all the flex boards" a senior officer said.

"There are over 1000 flex boards near the stadium and in the vicinity and we are checking all the flex boards around the stadium and 500 metres away. Each flex board is being thoroughly checked," he said.

The explosive material was found when the flex column was opened during search operations. It appeared that the explosive had been stuffed through the bottom of the column, he said, adding that the material would be subjected chemical analysis.

Police began combing operations in the area and were checking all billboards after two low intensity crude bombs exploded outside the stadium minutes before an IPL match between Royal Challengers Bangalore and Mumbai Indians was to begin yesterday, leaving 15 people injured.

At least eight to ten people are being questioned in connection with the explosion, police said.

However, no arrest has been made so far. "The interrogative process is very much on," they said.

Meanwhile, police have tightened security in and around the area.

Bomb disposal squad were conducting combing operation and sniffer dogs have been pressed into service to detect suspicious objects.
 

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Terror alert for flights to West

India's security agencies have warned that terrorists are planning to attack flights going to western countries from the country's airports.
After receiving this input from intelligence agencies, the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS) has issued a nationwide alert and directed heads of civil aviation security in different parts of the country to mount security preparedness at all the airports.
Besides asking airline operators to be vigilant, the agencies involved in airport security have been directed to carry out "100 per cent search of passengers and manual checking of carry-on baggage".
The security agencies have also been asked to carry out "secondary security checks at the ladder point of aircraft in respect of all flights from India to western countries," the alert said.
A BCAS official said the government had taken the latest input seriously as the terrorists had been planning for a long time to break into India's aviation security in the run up to 2010 Commonwealth Games.
Some of the airports are already on the radar of the terrorists as their objective is to tarnish the country's image before the Commonwealth Games, he added.
In January last, the government had put all Air India planes operating in the country's neighbourhood on high alert after the intelligence agencies warned that the Lashar-e-Tayyeba and other terror groups were planning to hijack a plane.
In view of continuing threat to the civil aviation security, the Union home ministry had conducted a series a review meetings and issued directives to be more vigilant to prevent any terrorist attack.
 

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The rebirth of the Indian Mujahideen

Praveen Swami
Saturday's bombings in Bangalore are a grim reminder that the jihadist movement is far from spent.
Less than an hour before police surrounded the Indian Mujahideen bomb-factory hidden away on the fringes of the Bhadra forests in Chikmagalur, Mohammad Zarar Siddi Bawa had slipped away on a bus bound for Mangalore — the first step in a journey that would take him to the safety of a Lashkar-e-Taiba safehouse in Karachi.

Inside the house, officers involved in the October, 2008, raid found evidence of Bawa's work: laboratory equipment used to test and prepare chemicals, precision tools, and five complete improvised explosive devices. Even as investigators across India set about filing paperwork declaring Bawa a fugitive, few believed they would ever be able to lay eyes on him again.

But in February, a closed-circuit television camera placed over the cashier's counter at the Germany Bakery in Pune recorded evidence that Bawa had returned to India — just minutes before an improvised explosive device ripped through the popular restaurant killing seventeen people, and injuring at least sixty.

Dressed in a loose-fitting blue shirt, a rucksack slung over his back, the fair, slight young man with a wispy beard has been identified by police sources in Gujarat, Maharashtra and Karnataka as "Yasin Bhatkal" — the man who made the bombs which ripped apart ten Indian towns and cities between 2005 and 2008. Witnesses at the restaurant also identified Bawa from photographs, noting that he was wearing trousers rolled up above his ankles — a style favoured by some neo-fundamentalists.

Bawa is emerging as the key suspect in Saturday's bombings outside the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore — a grim reminder that the jihadist offensive that began after the 2002 communal violence in India is very far from spent.

The obscure jihadist

Little is known about just what led Bawa to join the jihadist movement. Educated at Bhatkal's well-respected Anjuman Hami-e-Muslimeen school, 32-year-old Bawa left for Pune as a teenager. He was later introduced to other members of the Indian Mujahideen as an engineer, but police in Pune have found no documentation suggesting he ever studied in the city.

Instead, Bawa spent much of his time with a childhood friend living in Pune, Unani medicine practitioner-turned-Islamist proselytiser Iqbal Ismail Shahbandri. Like his brother Riyaz Ismail Shahbandri — now the Indian Mujahideen's top military commander — Ismail Shahbandri had become an ideological mentor to many young Islamists in Pune and Mumbai, many of them highly-educated professionals.

The Shahbandari brothers' parents, like many members of the Bhatkal elite, had relocated to Mumbai in search of new economic opportunities. Ismail Shahbandri, their father, set up leather-tanning factory in Mumbai's Kurla area in the mid-1970s. Riyaz Shahbandri went on to obtain a civil engineering degree from Mumbai's Saboo Siddiqui Engineering College and, in 2002, was married to Nasuha Ismail, the daughter of an electronics store owner in Bhatkal's Dubai Market.

Shafiq Ahmad, Nasuha's brother, had drawn Riyaz Shahbandri into the Students Islamic Movement of India. He first met his Indian Mujahideen co-founders Abdul Subhan Qureshi and Sadiq Israr Sheikh, in the months before his marriage. Later, Riyaz Shahbandri made contact with ganglord-turned-jihadist Amir Raza Khan. In the wake of the communal violence that ripped Gujarat apart in 2002, the men set about funnelling recruits to Lashkar camps in Pakistan.

Early in the summer of 2004, investigators say, the core members of the network that was later to call itself the Indian Mujahideen met at Bhatkal's beachfront to discuss their plans. Iqbal Shahbandri and Bhatkal-based cleric Shabbir Gangoli are alleged to have held ideological classes; the group also took time out to practice shooting with airguns. Bawa had overall charge of arrangements — a task that illustrated his status as the Bhatkal brothers' most trusted lieutenant.

Bhatkal, police investigators say, became the centre of the Indian Mujahideen's operations. From their safehouses in Vitthalamakki and Hakkalamane, bombs were despatched to operational cells dispersed across the country, feeding the most sustained jihadist offensive India has ever seen.

Communal war

Like so many of his peers in the Indian Mujahideen, Bawa emerged from a fraught communal landscape. Bhatkal's Nawayath Muslims, made prosperous by hundreds of years of trade across the Indian Ocean, emerged as the region's dominant land-owning community. Early in the twentieth century, inspired by call of Aligarh reformer Syed Ahmed Khan, Bhatkal notables led a campaign to bring modern education for the community. The Anjuman Hami-e-Muslimeen school where Bawa studied was one product of their efforts, which eventually spawned highly-regarded institutions that now cater to over several thousand students.

Organisations like the Anjuman helped the Navayath Muslims capitalise on the new opportunities for work and business with opened up in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia during the 1970s. But this wealth, in turn, engendered resentments which laid the ground for an communal conflict. In the years after the Emergency, the Jana Sangh and its affiliates began to capitalise on resentments Bhatkal's Hindus felt about the prosperity and political power of the Navayaths. The campaign paid off in 1983, when the Hindu right-wing succeeded in dethroning legislator S.M. Yahya, who had served as a state minister between 1972 and 1982.

Both communities entered into a competitive communal confrontation, which involved the ostentatious display of piety and power. The Tablighi Jamaat, a neo-fundamentalist organisation which calls on followers to live life in a style claimed to be modelled on that of the Prophet Mohammad, drew a growing mass of followers. Hindutva groups like the Karavalli Hindu Samiti, too, staged ever-larger religious displays to demonstrate their clout.

Early in 1993, Bhatkal was hit by communal riots which claimed seventeen lives and left dozens injured. The violence, which began after Hindutva groups claimed stones had been thrown at a Ram Navami procession, and lasted nine months. Later, in April 1996, two Muslims were murdered in retaliation for the assassination of Bharatiya Janata Party legislator U. Chittaranjan — a crime that investigators now say may have been linked to the Bhatkal brothers. More violence broke out in 2004, after the assassination of BJP leader Thimmappa Naik.

Iqbal Shahbandri and his recruits were, in key senses, rebels against a traditional political order that appeared to have failed to defend Muslim rights and interests. Inside the Indian Mujahideen safehouses raided in October, 2008, police found no evidence that traditional theological literature or the writings of the Tablighi Jamaat had influenced the group. Instead, they found pro-Taliban videos and speeches by Zakir Naik — a popular but controversial Mumbai-based televangelist who has, among other things, defends Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin-Laden.

"If he is fighting the enemies of Islam", Naik said in one speech, "I am for him. If he is terrorising America the terrorist—the biggest terrorist — I am with him." "Every Muslim" Naik concluded, "should be a terrorist. The thing is, if he is terrorising a terrorist, he is following Islam". Naik has never been found to be involved in violence, but his words have fired the imagination of a diverse jihadists — among them, Glasgow suicide-bomber Kafeel Ahmed, 2006 Mumbai train-bombing accused Feroze Deshmukh, and New York taxi driver Najibullah Zazi, who faces trial for planning to attack the city's Grand Central Railway Station.

Language like this spoke to concerns of the young people who were drawn to separate jihadist cells that began to spring up across India after the 2002 violence, mirroring the growth of the Indian Mujahideen. SIMI leader Safdar Nagori set up a group that included the Bangalore information-technology professionals Peedical Abdul Shibli and Yahya Kamakutty; in Kerala Tadiyantavide Nasir, Abdul Sattar, and Abdul Jabbar set up a separate organisation that is alleged to have bombed Bangalore in 2008

Storms of hate

Well-entrenched in the political system, Bhatkal's Muslim leadership has been hostile to radical Islamism. Efforts by Islamist political groups to establish a presence there have, for the most part, been unsuccessful. But authorities acknowledge Bhatkal, like much of the Dakshina Kannada region, remains communally fraught. Small-scale confrontations are routine. Earlier this month, the Karavalli Hindu Samiti even staged demonstrations in support of the Sanatana Sanstha, the Hindutva group police in Goa say was responsible for terrorist bombings carried out last year.

Pakistan's intelligence services and transnational jihadist groups like the Lashkar nurtured and fed India's jihadist movement — but its birth was the outcome of an ugly communal contestation that remains unresolved. Even as India's police and intelligence services work to dismantle the jihadist project, politicians need to find means to still the storms of hate which sustain it.
 

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Stadium attacks herald new Indian Mujahideen offensive

Praveen Swami
Karnataka jihadist Mohammad Bawa the principal suspect, say police
BANGALORE/NEW DELHI: Investigators believe Saturday's bombings at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore were executed by an Indian Mujahideen cell led by Mohammad Zarar Siddi Bawa, police sources told TheHindu.

Karnataka-born Bawa—also known as 'Yasin Bhatkal'—is allegedly a key figure in a series of urban bombings executed by the Indian Mujahideen between 2005 and 2008 that claimed hundreds of lives.

Bawa, police say, was the organisation's key-bomb maker and his devices were used in the attacks.

Earlier this year, during investigations, he emerged as a key suspect in the bombing of the German Bakery in Pune. Police informants had identified the fair, slight Bawa, dressed in a loose-fitting blue shirt and a rucksack slung over his back, in closed-circuit footage recorded by a camera placed over the cashier's counter at the German Bakery. Witnesses also identified Bawa from photographs shown to them by Pune investigators.

The police sources say there was credible intelligence that he was planning further attacks, but insist there was no information suggesting the M. Chinnaswamy stadium was to be targeted.

The timer-activated improvised explosive devices were similar in design to the devices used in Bangalore. "High humidity in Bangalore because of recent rains may have degraded the ammonium nitrate used to manufacture the bombs, lessening their lethality," a senior police official told TheHindu. Similar problems had led the nine improvised explosive devices planted in Bangalore in July, 2008, to malfunction.

Bawa was allegedly recruited into the Indian Mujahideen by his childhood friends, Islamist ideologue Iqbal Shahbandri and his brother Riyaz Ismail Shahbandri. Karnataka Police sources say Bawa was a key figure in a meeting held in the summer of 2004 on the beachfront in Bhatkal, where key Indian Mujahideen operatives met for the first time to discuss their operational strategies.

Police in several States have sought Bawa ever since October, 2008, when he escaped a police raid on an Indian Mujahideen safe house near Chikmagalur. Police recovered laboratory equipment, precision tools and five complete improvised explosive devices during the raids.

For at least a year, it has been clear that the Indian Mujahideen has been rebuilding its networks in India. In his testimony to the United States' Federal Bureau of Investigation, Pakistani-American jihadist David Headley spoke of what he called the 'Karachi Project': a Lashkar effort to raise new networks of Indian jihadists.

Police say Hyderabad-based jihadist Sheikh Abdul Khaja, who was arrested by the Indian authorities in January, had met with key leaders of the Indian Mujahideen in Karachi, including Bawa, the Shahbandri brothers, and gang-lord-turned-jihadist Amir Raza Khan.
 

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Five held in Hubli for B'lore blasts


Investigations into the twin blasts outside the M Chinnaswamy Stadium here took a dramatic turn with City Crime Branch (CCB) sleuths taking five suspected terrorists into custody in Hubli on Tuesday night.

The new twist comes in the wake of a former Karnataka State Reserve Police (KSRP) employee emerging as the mastermind behind the blasts that left 17 people injured and forced the shifting of the semi-final matches to Navi Mumbai. The city police had reportedly found some similarities in the April 17 blasts and the serial explosions that struck Bangalore in July 2008.

The Hubli arrests followed the CCB's trail of a suspect who was travelling without ticket on a train from Bangalore to Gaziabad. The police reportedly took him into custody in Belgaum and interrogated him. He was brought to Hubli and, based on his information, four other ultras were nabbed, sources said. The suspects had booked two rooms—No 107 and No 109—at the Sriram Residency at Hosur Cross in the name of Sunil Rao and M Irfan on Sunday and Tuesday respectively. On a tip-off, the police raided the hotel and took the suspects into custody. It is said that a senior police officer in Hubli played a major role in zeroing in on the suspects.

One of the suspects is physically disabled. Some of them had Uttar Pradesh links. It was not immediately known whether they would be brought to Bangalore. The police have decided to subject the hotel management for a detailed examination.

Newspaper connection
The Hubli arrests assume significance since a newspaper published from Hubli was found at one of the sites where the explosives were hidden.

It is learnt that the police have decided to re examine video footages once the arrested are brought to Bangalore. The suspects might have planned to move towards Bhatkal from Hubli. The police will also investigate the possible Hubli link to the Bangalore blasts.

Meanwhile, efforts are on to find possible links between the Indian Mujahideen, whose operatives allegedly set off serial blasts in the City, and the former KSRP employee from Bhatkal in Mangalore.

On Tuesday, the police top brass was in a denial mode on the suspected involvement of the retired KSRP staff who, it is learnt, was examined by the police after detaining for questioning. A senior officer, however, said the investigators were keen to have the retired KSRP man as a witness since he was the "nucleus" of the plan to set off the crude bomb blasts outside the Chinnaswamy Stadium.
The police recovered about 4.2 kg of amonimum nitrate from the blast site and near places where the unexploded bombs were found.

A quarter kg of ammonium is required to explode a large boulder stone. A day after Pune police team visited the City and exchanged information about the twin blasts, a six-member team of the NIA, which is mandated with the task of probing all suspected terrorist actions, on Tuesday inspected the explosion sites here.

According to the police, the NIA team, led by Gujarat Anti-terrorist Squad chief Ajay Tomar, interacted with the police officers investigating the case. The team also looked into the security arrangements inside and outside the stadium. It inspected in detail various spots, including Gate No 12 and the area in front of Police Wireless Headquarters, where blasts took place on April 17. It also surveyed Gate No 8 where an explosive was found. The team also inspected the spot near Gate No 1 and the bus shelter close to Mahatma Gandhi Park.

Addressing a press conference in Bangalore, DGP Ajai Kumar Singh concealed more than he revealed, saying "certain rumours are baseless." Singh was referring to the involvement of the former KSRP staff in the blasts.
 

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To Bangalore, with hate

Praveen Swami
Police hunting for the perpetrators of last week's attacks on the Chinnaswamy stadium in Bangalore are revisiting the 2008 serial bombings in the city.
"HAPPY Vishu, Malayalees and Pravasees," reads the cheerful red banner running across the web page set up by an enthusiastic resident of Pallikera in Kerala. Photos offer a glimpse of the small town's charms: men with gym-honed biceps, the Bekal fort, and, improbably, photos of two western tourists hugging the billboard of a local celebrity.

Fifteen years ago, a young man named Sarfaraz Nawaz left Pallikera on a journey that would lead, step by step, to the serial bombings in Bangalore in June, 2008. From his story, and that of his associates in south India's Islamist networks, investigators have pieced together a fascinating account of how multiple jihadist cells formed across the region; linked to each other only loosely through leaders, who in turn were connected to Islamist groups in the Gulf and the Lashkar-e-Taiba's commanders in Pakistan.

But the story also demonstrates disturbing gaps in intelligence; gaps that allowed jihadists to mobilise and recruit members, and prepare for attacks. Following last week's bombings at the M. Chinnaswamy stadium in Bangalore, the police in Karnataka have renewed the search for over a dozen individuals linked to Nawaz's networks who eluded arrest after the June 2008 serial bombings in India's information-technology capital.

Born in 1977, the quiet, scholarly Nawaz joined the Students Islamic Movement of India in 1995. In 1996, he left home to study at the famous Dar-ul-Uloom Nadwat-ul-Ullema seminary in Lucknow. But he found its clerical austerity stifling, and returned to Kochi to study at Accel Computers. Fluent in Malayalam, English, Hindi, Urdu and Arabic, Nawaz began writing regularly in the SIMI-linked Kerala magazine Nerariv and the pro-National Development Front newspaper Thejus.

By March 2000, Nawaz had become SIMI's office secretary in New Delhi. His friends included Safdar Nagori, the imprisoned head of SIMI's jihadist faction; fugitive Indian Mujahideen commander Abdul Subhan Qureshi; and Saqib Nachan, charged with a bombing on a Mumbai train that left eleven dead.

In 2001, Nawaz took a job with computer-services firm Future Outlooks at Ibra in Oman. Later, he joined the Ibn Sina Medical Institute in Dubai — a facility run by a former president of SIMI's Kerala chapter, Dr. Abdul Ghafoor — as its public relations officer. Abdul Aziz, another former SIMI member from Malappuram in Kerala, helped Nawaz get a job at the al-Mihad centre in 2006. In July 2006, he shifted to the al-Noor Education Trust in Muscat.

Muscat was the hub from which the 2008 Bangalore bombings were planned and financed. In the summer of 2007, Bangalore Police investigators say, Nawaz met Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba commander Mohammad Rehan in Muscat. Introduced by common friends, the two men discussed armed retaliation against anti-Muslim violence in India. Nawaz refused his offer to train in Pakistan but agreed to recruit Kerala residents to the Lashkar's cause.

Jihad at the ginger plantation

The police do not know precisely what led Nawaz to work with the Lashkar but the fraught communal climate probably was a factor. In 2002, a drunken New Year's fight in the beach village of Marad sparked off violence that lasted a year, claiming thirteen lives. Hundreds of Muslim families fled the area. Nawaz was not in India at the time but he turned to a man who was.

Tadiyantavide Nasir joined the far-right Islamic Sevak Sangh in 1991, at just fifteen years of age. Police records document his chaotic, violent life: a murder charge, of which he was acquitted; an abortive attempt to assassinate the former Kerala Chief Minister, E.K. Nayanar; the burning of a Tamil Nadu bus to protest the arrest of ISS leader Abdul Nasser Maudany on terrorism charges; and a bombing outside the Kozhikode Press Club to highlight his cause.

Nasir was not a SIMI member but knew many of its members well. From 2005, Nasir began to tap Nawaz for funds to set up a jihad training camp on a remote ginger plantation near Hasatota in Karnataka's Kodagu district.

In 2007, the police say, he met key SIMI operative Qureshi — who, using the code-name Tauqir, liaised between the Indian Mujahideen's regional cells. Later, Nasir's cell supplied ammonium nitrate and integrated-circuit timers to the Indian Mujahideen's Mangalore-based commander Riyaz Ismail Shahbandri. Shahbandri's lieutenant Mohammad Zarar Siddi Bawa is the key suspect in the 2010 German Bakery bombing at Pune.

In 2007, Nawaz met Nasir in Kerala and discussed plans for an attack on Bangalore. By 2008, investigators say, the Lashkar's Rehan offered some $2,500 to finance the operation. Islamists living in the Gulf, notably fugitive terror commander CAM Bashir, raised additional funds. That March, Nawaz travelled home to Kerala. He also travelled to Bangalore, to look at possible targets. Nasir's group later tested two bombs near Kozhikode.

On July 23, 2008, Nasir and his group arrived in Bangalore in a hired Scorpio jeep, loaded with fourteen improvised explosive devices. Nine went off two days later, killing two people, injuring twenty.

Later that year, Nasir sent five cadre to Jammu and Kashmir, to train with a Lashkar commander in the Lolab valley near Kupwara. Nawaz had set up the training opportunity but police and Army personnel soon detected the strangers. Abdul Faiz and Mohammad Fayyaz from Kannur, Muhammad Yasir from Kochi, and Abdul Rahim from Malappuram were shot dead. Abdul Jabbar, the fifth volunteer, is under trial.

Bus tickets found on the body of one of the jihadists helped unravel the operation. Nasir fled to Bangladesh, aided by Lashkar operatives based out of Dhaka. It was not until last year that the Research and Analysis Wing located Nawaz in Oman, setting off a transnational manhunt that led to the arrest of Nasir and the Lashkar's Karachi-origin resident commander in Dhaka, Mubashir Shahid.

SIMI's jihadist faction had hoped the infrastructure set up by Nawaz and Nasir would help a separate cell that it had given birth to in Bangalore a decade ago. In 2000, a young SIMI ikhwan (full time worker) Peedical Abdul Shibli had moved to Bangalore to work at IT giant Tata Elexi. Recruited by the Islamist group in 1997 while he was a student in Thiruvananthapuram, Shibli was among Nawaz's key activists.

Shibli soon set up Sarani, a hostel for north Kerala migrants to Bangalore, offering them an Islamic environment. It ran in Bangalore's Vivek Nagar area, before moving to larger premises in Eejipura and then Bismillah Nagar. Kerala SIMI ideologues would often lecture residents here. Few Sarani residents, though, were stereotypical fanatics. Shibli's key recruit, Wipro-General Electric employee Yahya Kamakutty, for example, travelled to the U.S. at least thrice in 2000-2001 alone.

In 2001, following its public declarations of support for Al-Qaeda, SIMI was proscribed; but Sarani continued to run. SIMI chief Safdar Nagori visited the hostel in 2002 for three days, as did several other senior ideologues, unmonitored by local intelligence services.

By early 2006, Shibli was working full-time for SIMI's now-covert jihadists. In April 2006, SIMI held a secret meeting in Bangalore. Later, at a meeting held in Ujjain from July 4-7 2006, SIMI committed itself to an Islamist jihad against the Indian state. In April 2007, SIMI held a training camp at Castle Rock near Hubli, under the cover of hosting an outdoors event for Sarani residents. Another camp was held in Bijapur in June 2007, followed by a meeting at Dharwar in August.

Police failure

Recruits received bomb-making and firearms instruction from Subhan at camps held near Indore in September and November, 2007. Instruction in assembling fuel bombs was provided in December 2007 at a camp held outside Ernakulam. Of the forty-odd individuals the police believe attended these camps, over half were Bangalore residents. The police arrested several, including Shibly, Kamakutty, Husain and Raziuddin Nasir, who planned to bomb western tourists in Goa in the winter of 2008 but over half are still missing.

Many believe Bangalore's police simply did not take the threat seriously enough. No effort was made to install even basic defensive measures like closed-circuit cameras around the Chinnaswamy stadium. But there is a larger failure, too. For all the technological investments in intelligence made since the November 2008 carnage in Mumbai, the attacks in Pune and Bangalore have made clear that the police are yet to penetrate the jihadist cells responsible for the terror offensive from 2005 onwards — a failure that bodes ill for the future.
 

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Huge stock of explosives seized at Manjeri

Staff Reporter
Cache included 3,100 kg ammonium nitrate, 195 detonators


Harmful haul: Police officers examining the ammonium nitrate unearthed during raids from a fertilizer shop at Manjeri in Malappuram district on Wednesday.
MALAPPURAM: The police seized a huge stockpile of explosive materials stored illegally in a fertilizer shop at Manjeri on Wednesday. Two persons, including a co-owner of the shop, were arrested.

As much as 3,100 kg ammonium nitrate, 195 detonators, and 60 metres of fuse wire were seized during raids at the fertilizer shop on Pandikkad Road and a godown near a hospital.

Abdurahman, 42, son of Kunhikoya, Thottumukkath House, Melakkam, Manjeri, and salesman Abdul Muneer, 20, son of Hamza from Thrikkalangode, near Manjeri, were arrested.

K.S. Sudarsan, Dy.SP, said they were searching for the prime accused, Ali (40), Abdurahman's younger brother, who owns the shop.

They were booked under Section 4 and 5 of the Explosives Substances Act for illegally possessing and selling explosive substances.

Mr. Sudarsan said they had no licence to procure or sell explosives. It needed to be examined if they had a fertilizer licence, he said.

The police had enhanced their vigil against explosives in the district following the recovery of 79 gelignite sticks from the construction site of a bridge across the Kadalundipuzha at Karyadu Kadavu, near Tirurangadi, on April 6. None was, however, arrested in connection with the explosives recovery.

Acting on a tip-off, the police raided the fertilizer shop at Manjeri and found about 100 kg of ammonium nitrate. The raids that followed at a godown unearthed the remaining three tones of the explosive material stacked in 56 bags.

The ammonium nitrate bags were found wrapped in another bag with 'PVC Resin' inscribed on them. "This was clearly to misguide the people," Mr. Sudarsan said.

The police said ammonium nitrate was being used widely for quarrying purposes in the district.
 

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Raghu Raman to head National Intelligence Grid
NATGRID would help intelligence and law enforcement agencies across the country to get quick access to desired information
Published on 12/02/2009 - 13:03:44 PM
New Delhi: Mahindra Special Services Group CEO Captain Raghu Raman has been appointed Chief Executive Officer of the National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID) project to strengthen the intelligence sharing and analysing mechanism in the country.

NATGRID would help intelligence and law enforcement agencies across the country to get quick access to desired information.

While the user agencies and the databases have been identified, the complete NIG would be delivered in 18 months time and will link 21 databases that can be accessed by 10 security agencies.

The National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID) will collate all data and information of an individual in a non-obtrusive manner in the country.

It will link data available with different agencies like bank accounts, rail and air travel, income tax and phone calls in a seamless fashion.

Raman has been entrusted to establish the grid by May 2011 when the project is expected to be fully implemented, official sources in the Home Ministry said.

During his 10 year stint with the forces he spent time battling counter-insurgency in Punjab, leading troops in active operations in Siachen Glacier, as a UN Peace Keeper in Angola and finally as an instructor teaching tactics and leadership to young officers in the School of
Armored Warfare.

In 1998 he left the Army and joined the Mahindra United World College with a specific project responsibility of setting up the IT Infrastructure including the hugely ambitious Internet Connectivitylink. At that point, this link was considered to be far ahead of its time in the education world and had the distinction of being one of the longest microwave connectivity's.

In addition to his training in the Military College of Telecommunication Engineering, Raman has been trained in hacking in Foundstone, in Competitive Intelligence in the US, and other strategic programs in ISB and IIM.

Raman has been a speaker and trainer in RSA (Singapore), ISB, MDI and is considered an authority on information risk management and counter-intelligence.
 

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Smaller terror outfits pose danger: IB

Miniscule outfits will strike the country with new names, indicate security sources.

Of late there have been several unknown names which have emerged after every terrorist strike and the intelligence sources say that newer names will continue to emerge in the future too.

The Indian Mujahideen [ Images ], in particular, will be in the forefront of all India-based operations and will operate under new names.
Sources say just the way SIMI [ Images ] was phased out and became the IM, the same will happen to the latter too.

In the recent past, there have been several names that have cropped up after a terror strike. The Deccan Mujahideen, Lashkar-e-Taiba al-Almi and very recently the DJS. While the IM and the Lashkar-e-Taiba al-Almi had claimed responsibility for the Mumbai [ Images ] and Pune attacks respectively, the name of the DJS, a Hyderabad-based group, was suspected for the recent Bangalore blasts.

"We are very well aware of which group operates under which name. It will cause confusion at first since the investigation tends to drift in one particular direction for a while, but then it gets back on track. The IM, we are aware, is looking for a name change," sources said.

The bigger concern is, however, not the name change, but the attempts that the IM is making to merge with several defunct outfits.

It is now confirmed that the IM is shifting base to South India and is gradually looking to increase the number of modules and cells.

The IM is looking for tie-ups and there is a radar of suspicion on some outfits in South India. Outfits such as the MDF from Andhra, the Indian Mohammedia Mujahideen (AP, Kar), Deendar Anjuman (AP, Kar, TN), ISS (Kerala [ Images ]) and the All India Jihad Committee (Kerala).

Terror groups are constantly in dialogue with these outfits since they already have an existing network in place.
Some of the above mentioned outfits feel that they have been wronged by Indian agencies since they were never set up in the first place to undertake terror activities or cause communal disturbances.

However, ever since the police have swooped on their operations they have gone underground.

The worry for security agencies is that such outfits would only be glad to help out the IM and that would mean that it would become an extremely strong force.
 

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Sleuth scanner on IPL betting 'crores'
JAYANTA ROY CHOWDHURY
New Delhi, April 19: The betting on IPL games may be generating between Rs 25,000 crore and Rs 40,000 crore a year from India, taxmen say.

"We believe that the amount of bets placed on IPL games could be as high as Rs 700-1,000 crore per match. After all, bets are placed on almost everything ----- wins, losses, runs per ball, the number of runs scored by a batsman, the number of wickets taken by a bowler, the Man of the Match, third umpire decisions"¦" a tax official said.

The punters place their bets from illegal betting rooms in various cities that feed a master betting room in Dubai. They also use online betting sites such as the UK-based Bet365, Ladbrokes, Victor Chandler and Paddypower as well as the London Stock Exchange-listed William Hill, besides the popular Betfair, BetClick, BlueSquare and others.

The odds for the Chennai Super Kings versus Delhi Daredevils game on April 15 were close: 20/21 and 19/20 respectively. It meant that a bet of Rs 2,000 got one Rs 2,100 if Chennai won, and a bet of Rs 1,900 fetched one Rs 2,000 if Delhi won, officials said.

All the betting sites accept Indian registration. Payments to the foreign websites have to be made through legal money transfers and usually in dollars, pounds or euros. Some, Bet365 for example, accept rupee accounts too.

The tax officials said betting on the foreign sites might be checked to see whether the bets from India were legal under Indian laws. The exercise will try to identify the big Indian punters and whether there is any insider trading — profiting from information not made public — within the Indian cricket board, the BCCI, officials said.

However, the Dubai connection is illegal. This betting is controlled by the underworld and the cash generated is black money which, intelligence officials suspect, may be feeding narcotic-crime syndicates, especially those controlled by Dawood Ibrahim. They believe the wealth is being ploughed into a maze of other illegal businesses.

The officials said a proper investigation into the Dubai racket could be done only with the help of UAE police and India's intelligence agencies.


One of the theories doing the rounds on the low-intensity weekend blasts in Bangalore is that they were the handiwork of punters. These people had apparently developed cold feet on the huge bets they had placed and did not want the match to take place.

Several states' police have busted betting rooms in places as widely separated as Jharkhand and Haryana. Mumbai, Surat, Delhi, Pune, Jaipur, Indore, Raipur and Chandigarh are among the leading centres for rupee betting.

The racket operates in Pakistan too. Cable operators there had decided not to telecast the IPL after the league's snub to Pakistani cricketers, but had to start beaming the matches last week "on popular demand".

A Pakistani cricket official, Shahzad Khan, recently said the "bookies (in Pakistan) are stronger than the government" and the country's cricket board, which had recommended the ban on the telecast of IPL matches.
 

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Intelligence input argues ISI activities in Tripura

Agartala, May 24 (NEPS): Besides other northeastern militants both the banned All Tripura Tiger Force (ATTF) and National Liberation Force of Tripura (NLFT) have developed closer contact with Muslim fundamentalist outfits including the Jamat-I-Islami, Pakistan�s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Al Qaida in Bangladesh soil, the intelligence inputs strongly argued. The latest intelligence reports created sensation among the police and Para military forces operating in Tripura. Highly placed sources in Intelligence agencies said, in third week of March last the ISI activists and representatives of the Al Qaida held a meeting with leaders of the banned militant outfits of Tripura in a secret hideout in the Chittagong hill-tracts of Bangladesh.

Quoting intelligence statement a senior police officer told North East Press Service, the meeting expressed that the Bangladesh government was not in a position to antagonize government of India by continuing support to the anti-Indian militant outfits though precondition for improving bilateral relations was dismantling of militant bases on Bangladesh soil.�The ISI-Al Qaida-Jamat combine have struck an alliance for carrying out joint operations in Tripura and other states of northeast in collaboration with anti-Indian militant outfits� the report added.

Explaining why the Bangladesh government could not continue giving base facilities to the militant outfits the reports said that if the anti-Indian militants were to hold on to their bases in Bangladesh soil they would have to establish closer contact with the fundamentalist Muslim elements including Jamat-i-Islami. They also gave a broad hint that while Bangladesh government would not like to be seen as backing the militant outfits, Pakistan�s ISI and Al Qaida elements hiding in Bangladesh would provide assistance to them. The leaders of ATTF and NLFT attended the meeting agreed to shift loyalties and seek help from the fundamentalist elements as well as criminals operating in plain lands of Bangladesh. �We are keeping close watch on militant activities as well as maintaining rapport with the released persons who had kidnapped earlier�, intelligence sources added.

Tripura Director General of Police Mr. Methew John observed that the spurt in joint operations by banned militants and Bangladeshi dacoits and criminals in various parts of Tripura was the attribution of the new alliance between fundamentalist elements in Bangladesh and anti-Indian rebel outfits. According to the his statement 158 militancy related incidents took place while 71 innocent civilians and 14 security men killed in first four months of the year. Meanwhile, 107 people kidnapped and security personnel lost 12-service weapon during the period. He maintained that banned militants of Tripura now looked upon militancy as a �mere profession � for earning money and were hardly interested in resuming normal life through peace talks. This has been confirmed by a recent report compiled by intelligence wing of state police on the basis of feedback from Bangladesh.

http://www.kanglaonline.com/index.p...Idoc_Session=6ddb60ea04391f57d67c9600effd9431
 

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Radioactive substance detection mechanism nationwide soon: AEC

Hyderabad: All air, sea and land ports of the country would soon be equipped with radioactive substance detection mechanism to keep a check on its illegal import, Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Srikumar Banerjee said here on Thursday. The move comes after Cobalt-60, a radioactive substance, was found in the national capital three weeks ago. A lot has to be done in terms of checking at all the ports where scrap is being imported and presently, none of them has radioactive detection equipment, he said. "The government has started taking steps towards setting up detection units at all ports. Very soon land, sea and air ports will have the radioactive substance detector to prevent the substance's unauthorised entry into the country," Banerjee told mediapersons.

Referring to the Delhi incident, he said Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) personnel were fully equipped to carry out this kind of search operations. "In our fifty years of operations in the country there is not even a single instance of radioactive leakage or exposure to human beings. That shows the strong mechanism we adopt," he added.

http://www.zeenews.com/news622953.html
 

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India to set up DNA data banks

New Delhi: India will set up several DNA data banks at the national and state levels to strengthen forensic investigation, Science and Technology Minister Prithviraj Chavan told Parliament on Thursday.

A Draft Bill has already been circulated among the ministries and departments concerned; he said in the Rajya Sabha, reports IANS. "The Draft Bill having provision for establishment of DNA data banks both at the national and state levels was circulated to the Ministry of Home Affairs, Bureau of Police Research and Development, Central Bureau of Investigation, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, Planning Commission, Ministry of Finance, Department of Science and Technology, Ministry of Defence, Legislative Department of the Ministry of Law and Justice, and the Directorate of Forensic Science," Chavan said. "The comments have been obtained. The Draft Bill is being sent to all the states for their comments," the Minister added.
He said various ministries and departments have given their opinion on "confidentiality of information and penalties for misuse or abuse thereof, size, composition and tenure of members of the DNA Profiling Board, its powers and functions and administrative support". Comments have been received on the possible data sharing between the national and state DNA data banks, approval norms for DNA profiling laboratories and "procedures for expungement of records from the data bank". The Minister, however, said that the finalisation of the Bill involves further consultation with the states followed by cabinet approval.

http://www.zeenews.com/news622893.html
 

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US warns of imminent terror attacks in New Delhi

New Delhi, May 1 (PTI) In a fresh advisory, the US today warned of "imminent" terror attacks in New Delhi, particularly in market places like Connaught Place, Greater Kailash and Chandni Chowk, which are "attractive targets" for terrorist groups.

"This Warden Message provides updated information related to the April 21, 2010 Warden Message and additional information related to the Travel Alert issued for India on April 16, 2010," said the renewed advisory primarily intended for American citizens in India.

It said there are "increased indications that terrorists are planning imminent attacks in New Delhi."

The advisory noted that terrorists have targeted places in the past where U.S. citizens or Westerners are known to congregate or visit.

"Markets such as those located in Chandni Chowk, Connaught Place, Greater Kailash, Karol Bagh, Mehrauli, and Sarojini Nagar, can be especially attractive targets for terrorist groups," the advisory said.
 

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NSG hub to come up over 600 acres of land near Dankuni

Kolkata, Apr 28 The much-awaited National Security Guards (NSG) hub in eastern India would come up over 600 acres of land near Dankuni in West Bengal's Hooghly district, state's Home Secretary Ardhendu Sen said here today.The decision was taken in a meeting between state's Chief Secretary Asok Mohan Chakraborty and NSG Director General N P S Aulakh at the state secretariat, Sen said.
The NSG officials earlier visited some places like Rajarhat in North 24 Parganas district and Kanchrapara in Nadia district.As the land in Rajarhat was very expensive and the Army refused to leave its possession over land at Kanchrapara, the NSG has finally decided to set up its hub near Dankuni.Sen said the Hooghly District Magistrate has already been asked to finalise the price of land, most of which are wetland.

http://news.chennaionline.com/newsi...ba92-4338-a53e-19535bd16168&CATEGORYNAME=NATL
 

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Bangladesh handovers NDFB chief Daimary to India

Dawki (Meghalaya), May 1 (ANI):National Democratic Front ofBodoland (NDFB) chief Ranjan Daimary alias D R Nabla was handed over to Indianauthorities by the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) at Dawaki International border inMeghalaya.Daimary is wanted in the 2008 Assam serial bomb blasts caseand has been hiding in Bangaldesh since then.India had raised the matter with Bangaldesh several times atvarious levels.He is opposing the ongoing peace talks with the UnionGovernment.The Border Security Force (BSF), which took Daimary intocustody from the BDR, later handed him to Assam Police.The Assam Police has taken Daimary to Guwahati under tightsecurity.

In October 1986, Daimary formed the Bodo Security Force,which was later re-named as the NDFB.Though the NDFB, has entered into a ceasefire agreement withthe Government in May 2005, but mostly flouted the ground rules of theagreemant.After the 2008 blasr, the NDFB split into two factions - onesupporting the ceasefire, led by B Sungthagra alias Dhirn Boro - and the otherhardline faction, led by Daimary.Daimary's faction claims that it was the real NDFB andsought to establish separate Bodoland.Daimary was suspended from the outfit by the other factionsubsequently.Reportedly, the NDFB has close ties with the UnitedLiberation Front of Asom (ULFA) and in many cases carried out joint operations.It also has relations with other outfits in the region likeAchik National Volunteers Council (ANVC), Kamatapur Liberation Organisation(KLO) and National Socialist Council of Nagaland-Khaplang (NSCN-K). (ANI)

http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal...rs-ndfb-chief-daimary-to-india_100356833.html
 

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Currency directorate to be set up to contain faking
New Delhi, April 30 (IANS) In an effort to contain counterfeiting of Indian currency, the government is planning to set up a directorate of currency (DoC) under the finance ministry to monitor security breaches and review best practices worldwide."The DoC will monitor and review best practices around the world. It will also monitor and review instances of breach of security features in India besides identifying new security features and promote R&D," Minister of State for Finance, Namo Narain Meena told the Lok Sabha Friday.He said the efforts of the DOC are expected to substantially contain the counterfeiting of Indian bank notes.

http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal...to-be-set-up-to-contain-faking_100356532.html
 

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CCTV cameras soon in Vaishnodevi shrine, en route


File photo of a security person standing guard in the holy city of Katra near Jammu. PTI Photo

Jammu, May 9 (PTI) Closed-circuit television cameras will be installed soon in the cave shrine of Mata Vaishnodevi as well as on the route and base camp of the popular pilgrimage spot that had always remained on terrorist radar.

The CCTVs will be installed to ensure fool-proof security for the shrine, the Bangang-Bhawan route and the base camp of Katra town, Katra Superintendent of Police Shiv Kumar Sharma told PTI. The cameras will help keep an eye on suspicious activity as a preventive measure against any possible terrorist attack, he said.

Vaishnodevi shrine, located in Trikuta hills in Jammu and Kashmir, is the second busiest shrine in the country after Tirupati temple with over 80 lakh pilgrims visiting it annually. Over 20,000-30,000 people pilgrims visit the shrine daily.

The shrine has always been on the radar of terrorists.
 

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RSS schools to counter Madarsas on Indo-Nepal border


The RSS, which has always demanded a check on the 'mushroom' growth of the madarsas,specially, on the porous UP-Nepal border, has now hit upon a novel idea to counter it -- RSS-run Vidya Bharti schools, all along the roughly 550 kilometer-long-border, eastern UP shares with Nepal.

To undertake the task, theSangh has floated a new body, Seema Jagran Manch, which would oversee the construction of these schools.

The RSS, which has long maintained that madarsas, on both sides of the border, were actually being used for anti-national activity, feels that through these schools, it would be able to create an "army of patriots" ready to take on anyone casting an evil eye on India.

The only problem: Just as they accuse the madarsas of indulging in anti-national activity, the RSS too has critics, who feel that the Sangh agenda is guided by Israel.

"The RSS people clearly are on the payrolls of Israel. We have maintained this for long. So their coming up with a scheme to set up border schools, where Sangh ideology would be served in liberal doses, doesn't surprise us," said Zafaryab Jilani, a senior member of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB). Senior police officials while confirming that the madarsas on the borders have increased manifold, said, "There are some cases where we have inputs that something suspicious might be going on along the border. But, then, there's no guarantee that RSS-run schools would be able to improve things." The police sources said that there were around 1000 madarsas on both sides of the border.

Undeterred, the Sangh plans to go ahead with its plan of building schools. But that's not all. Senior RSS leader Indresh Kumar said, "Through the Seema Jagran Manchwe have started conducting coaching camps in border areas to provide training to youths. We plan to create a network in the border areas, which would tip-off security forces on spotting any suspicious activity there."

A drive is already on to make more and more people on the border join the Seema Suraksha Bal and to encourage greater interaction between the Seema Suraksha Bal (SSB) and the people living on the Indian side of the border, the RSS has launched a novel rakshabandhan scheme, encouraging people on the Indian side to tie rakhi to SSB jawans
http://www.hindustantimes.com/-RSS-...sas-on-Indo-Nepal-border/Article1-541455.aspx
 

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'Supplier' of satphones to terrorists flown to Delhi from Dubai​


Dubai-based Indian national Sajjad Sheikh, who allegedly supplied satellite phones, wireless sets, explosives and detonators to terror outfits, was today extradited to India from the UAE and taken into custody by the Special Cell of Delhi Police.

Sheikh, who is in his 40s, was flown to the Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi from Dubai where he was arrested earlier this year. Indian and UAE agencies completed his extradition formalities last month. He was flown to Delhi on an Indian Airlines flight.

"We picked him up from the airport itself. He is in custody and is being questioned about other agents in India and abroad who supply timers, detonators, wireless sets and Thuraya satellite phones to terror outfits," sources told The Indian Express.

It is alleged that Sheikh had been supplying satellite phones, wireless sets and explosives to terror outfits, including the Lashkar-e-Toiba, Harkat-ul-Mujahideen and Jaish-e-Mohammad, for the last 10 years.
In June 2005, he allegedly sent 40 Thuraya satellite phones, dozens of wireless sets and explosives to Delhi. That consignment was to be delivered to operatives of the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen in Jammu and Kashmir. But it was detected by Customs and the carrier, Mohammad Amin Khan, was arrested.

Amin Khan was said to have told his interrogators that Sheikh had sent the consignment, and that it was to be taken to Srinagar. The consignment, sent from Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, was recovered from the cargo complex of the IGI Airport on June 8, 2005.

Sources said the Thuraya phones were also sent to terror outfits in Pakistan and Bangladesh via the sea route. It is alleged that Sheikh received payments via hawala in Dubai.
 

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