Mumbai train blasts: Why the real perpetrators may never face justice

He said this, calmly, in videotaped testimony seen by the Delhi Police, the Gujarat Police, the Maharashtra Police and the Intelligence Bureau: “We assembled early in the morning, and by the time we had finished making the bombs, it was 2.00 p.m.  We had decided I would go first with one bag to Churchgate, and keep the bag in the First Class compartment. I would get down at Marine Lines station, and then go back to Churchgate.  Next, Atif would leave with two bags, and also come back to Churchgate. Abu Rashid and Sajid will take one bag each and keep the bags in the selected trains. Finally, Shahnawaz would come to Churchgate with two bags, and we would put both of them in the trains”. “Everything went as planned”. In 2008, a man called Sadiq Israr Sheikh, now in Sabarmati Jail facing trial on multiple terrorism charges, told police forces in Gujarat and New Delhi he had carried out the 7/11 attacks—not the men now being tried in a Mumbai court for the attacks.  Mumbai Police officials quickly dismissed his confession—which is not admissible in evidence under Indian law. Now, though, as the 7/11 trial nears its conclusion, Indians need to know the story he told: no judge has ever heard his story, and no judge may ever do so. Sheikh’s journey into the jihadist movement began in 1996, police dossiers record, when he joined the Students Islamic Movement of India, SIMI.  For much of his childhood, 1975-born Sheikh was shunted between Mumbai and Azamgarh, the consequence, family sources say, of the sometimes-troubled relationship between his mother, Asiya Bano, and father Israr Ahmad.  He ended his schooling after the tenth grade, but went on to obtain technical qualifications from the Industrial Training Institute and began working as a mechanic at Godrej. [caption id=“attachment_948191” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  One of the accused in the Mumbai train blasts case. AFP[/caption] He met the men who would later form the core of the Indian Mujahideen at SIMI meetings in Mumbai’s Cheetah Camp: among them, Karachi-based fugitives Riyaz Ismail Shahbandri and Abdul Subhan Qureshi.  He soon tired of the talk, though. “I found SIMI is not what I thought”, one statement to police records, “they were just into talking, but did not conduct any activities”. Precisely what in Sheikh’s life drew him to violence, we don’t know. His own testimony, like that of most Indian Mujahideen operatives, cites communal violence and the desire to avenge the demolition of the Babri Masjid. None of his brothers, though, demonstrated the same response to the same issues. Muhammad Arshad, the eldest, had a job in Muscat; Muhammad Arif, in Singapore; Muhammad Aslam had a video-game business in Mumbai; the youngest, Mohammad Tahir, a computer-software job. In 2001, Sheikh met with a distant relative, Mujahid Salim Azmi—later killed, controversially, in an encounter by the Gujarat Police.  The men, by Sheikh’s account to police, ended up having a long conversation about the conditions of Indian Muslims and the need to defend them. Through Azmi, Sheikh made contact with Asif Reza Khan, an organised crime figure who had founded a jihadist group that year, shortly before his killing in an encounter—again with the Gujarat Police. Late in October, 2001, Sheikh travelled on an Emirates flight from Dhaka to Karachi, on fake travel papers, and arrived at the Lashkar-e-Taiba’s Bahawalpur. Later, he underwent a training course at a Lashkar camp in Muzaffarabad. [embedalsosee] For several months after, Sheikh worked in Dubai, at Yahiya Electronics in Sharjah, a firm run by Asif Raza Khan’s brother, Amir Raza Khan.  He only returned to Azamgarh late in 2002—and allegedly formed the first cells of what we now call the Indian Mujahideen, along with fugitives Shahnawaz Alam and Mirza Shadab Beg. In February, 2005, Sheikh told his interrogators, the group carried out its first attack in Varanasi, using explosives sourced from now-incarcerated Bangladeshi Harkat-ul-Jihad-e-Islami operative Jalaluddin Mollah.  The bombs didn’t go off, but others did: on the Shramjeevi Express in July, 2005; at a Delhi market in October, 2005, before Diwali; at  Varanasi in March, 2006. From the Delhi bombings on to another attack on the city September, 2008, classified government forensic analysis available with Firstpost show, the Indian Mujahideen used the same timers and their bombs “bore the distinct signature of the IED [Improvised Explosive Device] maker”. Yet, Sheikh’s testimony was never investigated, nor the questions it threw up presented to judicial authorities. Mumbai’s 7/11 bombings—which killed 209, and injured over 700, far more than on 26/11—were the most lethal of the Indian Mujahideen’s many attacks .  The perpetrators, according to Sheikh’s testimony, were men he had recruited in Azamgarh on his return from training in Pakistan: among them, Atif Amin, killed in a shootout with Delhi Police in 2008, the fugitives Mohammad Sajid and Abu Rashid. Even though this group had bomb-making experience and expertise, the explosives stockpile shipped by Jalaluddin Mollah had been used up.  They turned, Sheikh claims, to Amir Raza Khan for help.  The ganglord put them in touch with a man Sheikh had known from his SIMI days in Mumbai, back in the 1990s—fugitive Indian Mujahideen commander Riyaz Ismail Shahbandri, who along with his key lieutenant Muhammad Ahmad Zarar Siddibapa, is profiled today in Firstpost. Shahbandri, police records say, supplied them with stocks of commercially-available ammonium-nitrate slurry explosives, later used in every Indian Mujahideen operation.  The explosive was packed into pressure cookers along with ball-bearings and the detonator linked to a 9-volt battery and Samay-brand alarm clock—the organisation’s trademark IED construction pattern. In his testimony, Sheikh says his involvement in the Indian Mujahideen’s subsequent operations was peripheral.  He pursued a course in computer hardware, and then finding a job servicing the Aditya Birla group’s equipment. “I was very much upset with the killing”, he explained.