SIMI: Jolt to 'Revival'

According to the release, the duo were on the run since they opened fire and killed a Police Constable and a Home Guard, who were part of a police team that was checking vehicles for suspicious passengers at the Suryapet Bus Stand in Nalgonda District, in the intervening night of April 1 and 2. A circle inspector and another Home Guard were injured in the firing. The duo had also tried to stop a car at gunpoint and injured one civilian when the driver of the car sped on.

Significantly, the slain SIMI cadres were part of the six member SIMI gang, led by Abu Fazal alias Doctor, which had escaped from Tantya Bheel Jail in Khandwa District on October 1, 2013. While Abu Fazal was arrested from Barwani District in MP on December 23, 2013, another three, identified as Zakir Hussain alias Sadiq, Mehboobalias Guddu, and Amjad Ramzan, are still on run. These SIMI cadres had escaped from jail along with another inmate, Abid Mirza Beg (all housed in barrack No. 2 of the jail from August 2013). Abid Mirza Beg was arrested from Sarvodaya Colony in Khandwa within four hours of the jailbreak.

According to reports, after their escape from the jail, these SIMI cadres had carried out several attacks across India, including the following:

July 10, 2014: Five people, including a Policeman, were injured in a low intensity bomb blast near Dagdusheth Halwai Ganapati temple in Pune in Maharashtra. The bomb was placed on a motorcycle in the parking area of Faraskhana and Vishrambaug Police Stations, located about 200 metres from the temple.

May 1, 2014: One passenger, identified as Swathi, died and another nine were injured in a bomb blast in the Guwahati-Bangalore Express train stationed at the Chennai Central Station in Chennai (Tamil Nadu).

It was, however, the September 12, 2014, low-intensity blast inside a house in the Jalan locality under the Kotwali Police Station area of Bijnor District in Uttar Pradesh, which brought the group once again under the radar of the intelligence agencies. Though no casualty was reported, Police recovered some explosives, remains of a half-assembled bomb, seven kilograms of matchsticks kept in cartons, another four large packs of matchboxes, one .32 bore pistol and a laptop.

Subsequently, it was found that the group had close linkages with members of theBurdwan module of the Bangladeshi terror outfit, Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB). An accidental explosion took place in a rented two-storey house at Khagragarh under the Burdwan Police Station in West Bengal, on October 2, 2014. Two persons were killed and another sustained injuries in the blast.

The Abu Fazal-led gang was also suspected to be involved in several cases of dacoity and bank robberies in different parts of MP, Uttar Pradesh, Odisha and Telangana. In one such operation, the group had looted an SBI [State Bank of India] branch in Karimnagar District in Telangana on February 1, 2014, and had decamped with INR 4.6 million.

Significantly, the six escapees were among eight SIMI/IM (Indian Mujahideen) suspects arrested by the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) of MP Police from Jabalpur and Bhopal on June 5, 2011, in connection with the November 29, 2009, triple murder of MP ATS trooper Sitaram Yadav, lawyer Sanjay Pal and bank officer Ravi Shankar Pare in Khandwa. They were also reportedly involved in the June 2011 killing of another ATS trooper, Bharat Singh Raghuvanshi, in Ratlam District in MP, as well as the August 23, 2010, INR 25 million gold robbery in Bhopal, MP. Other banks in Itarsi city, Hoshangabad District, and the Dewas District of MP had also been looted by them.

The killing of the SIMI cadres is a big success for the Security Forces (SFs) and intelligence agencies, as this group of SIMI cadres had been extremely active and planned to create havoc. Earlier interrogation reports of the two slain SIMI cadres, obtained while they were in Khandawa jail, and of their chief Abu Fazal, indicated that they sought to be the real face of home-grown terror, swearing allegiance to Taliban and al Qaeda and looking beyond the patronage of Pakistan's external intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), under which IM had been operating.

The threat of this particular group continues to loom large, as three other escapees remain at large. The recovery of a railway ticket, dated April 2, 2014, for travel between New Delhi and Hyderabad, from the latest encounter site, hinted at the possible role of a third suspect, and it seems that the other three escapees remain active. An unnamed senior Police officer was quoted as stating, "The slain Aslam Ayub and Mohammed Aijazuddeen were in Nalgonda District on April 2 and 3 (while they were on the run). So, there is no question of any of the two purchasing a train ticket in Delhi. We suspect that someone came from Delhi and met them on the night of April 3."

The challenge of neutralizing the remaining cadres of this SIMI gang in particular, and dismantling the wider SIMI network, at large, remains significant, despite the successfulonslaught against the IM and its subsequent 'loss of power'. SIMI, IM's parent organization, has been attempting to 'fill the vacuum' created by the losses inflicted on IM cadres and leadership. Indeed, SFs have so far arrested a total of 36 SIMI cadres over the past two years, resulting in dramatic losses of operational capabilities and widespread demoralization, particularly in IM. Security and intelligence agencies are likely to capitalize on present successes and information gleaned, to suppress any attempts at revival by SIMI. There is, moreover, a growing sense of urgency in this task, with the increasing visibility and international presence of global jihadi formation such as al Qaeda and Islamic State (IS). India's security apparatus appears to have adopted an extremely proactive operational posture, and has succeeded in neutralizing several Islamist extremist cells, and in interdicting several youth who planned to travel to Iraq-Syria to join up with IS. It remains to be seen whether surviving elements within the SIMI/IM complex are able to inflict significant future damage before the agencies discover and neutralize their networks.