Delhi blast: HuJI terror footprint gets bigger

The motive is unclear. At least the e-mail purportedly sent out by Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HuJI) to several news organisations leaves its real intent unexplained. It wants the death sentence of Afzal Guru, the 2001 Parliament attack convict, withdrawn. The senders surely could not be expecting the Indian government to oblige them. They probably want it to hurry up the process and get into some kind of trouble.

Whatever the real intention, the HuJI terror footprint has become bigger in India in the last few years. The Islamic fundamentalist organisation, operating mostly out of Bangladesh these days and primarily focused on Jammu and Kashmir’s merger with Pakistan, appears to have taken over the India operation from the Lashkar-e-Taiba and its loose affiliates.

Intelligence agencies have found crucial links between the terror outfit and the Varanasi temple bombings of 2006, Hyderabad Mecca Masjid blast of 2007, the 2008 serial bomb blasts at Jaipur, Pune’s German Bakery blast in 2010 and the recent serial blasts in Mumbai.

The agencies believe the outfit has a strong network in western Uttar Pradesh and has among new converts technically qualified youths sharp enough to operate small cells and to produce and use explosives. It has established several sleeper cells in Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan too.

According to a report in rediff.com, which quoted intelligence sources, the outfit has been on a hectic recruitment drive in recent months. At least 150 youth from West Bengal have gone missing. The sources said they were picked up by HuJI cadres and are being trained to launch operations against India.

The report says the family of each youth is being offered between Rs 20-25 lakh to join the outfit. The members of sleeper cells get around Rs 10,000 each a month. The organisation is looking to establish more sleeper cells in northern India before expanding operations to south India, it added.

It is not clear how other terror outfits like the SIMI and the Indian Mujahiddeen are linked to HuJI but intelligence sources feel the organisation could be cooperating with each other by renting out cadre to each other. It was expected that the HuJI—it was banned by Bangladesh in 2005 and is among the terrorist organisations banned by the UN—would lose strength after the reported killing of its leader Ilyas Kashmiri in a US drone attack in South Waziristan in June this year. But it continues its operations with equal freedom, reflecting a strong command network.

It was believed to have weakened considerably after the Bangladesh launched a crackdown on its counterfeit currency operations. But its operations in India continue unaffected. If the blast at Delhi is indeed the handiwork of the HuJI, the focus of the intelligence agencies must take a hard look at youth returning from Bangladesh.