Special team to probe Sufiya’s Vagamon visit

  A special police team will investigate the case relating to the alleged visit by Sufiya, wife of PDP supremo Abdul Nasser Madani, to the training camp conducted by outlawed Islamist outfit SIMI at Vagamon, Idukki district, Kerala in December, 2007.

The special team of the Kerala Police had been reportedly entrusted with the task of probing the alleged visit by the PDP chief’s wife to Vagamon as this had kicked off a controversy in Kerala. A court-ordered probe into the alleged role of Sufiya in the case of burning of a Tamil Nadu State Transport bus at Kalamassery, off Kochi was already on.

According to the Director General of Police, Gujarat, the SIMI camp at Vagamon, which followed a meeting of the outfit’s operatives at Panayikkulam, Aluva on August 15, 2007, was where the detailed practical plans of last year’s Indian Mujahiddeen terror attacks in different Indian cities were designed. Sufiya and her husband had denied the allegation of her visit to the camp.

Meanwhile, Shaduli, native of Erattupetta, and Mohammed Ansar, native of Aluva, suspected to be involved in the Bangalore, Ahamedabad and Delhi blasts, would be taken to Wagamon on Tuesday for collecting evidence. They were brought to Kottayam from Bangalore last week for the purpose.

The Judicial First Class Magistrate Court II, Kanjirappally, had on Saturday remanded Shaduli and Ansar in custody for 14 days. The special probe team had requested the court to leave them in their custody for taking them to Vagamon for evidence-collection. The police had earlier taken three extremists including Shibili, Shaduli’s brother, to Vagamon for collecting evidence. The other two were Amil Parves and Hafiz Hussein.

According to the police, Shaduli and Muhammad Ansar had been involved in the blasts in Bangalore, Ahmedabad and Delhi. It was in this context that allegations had come up that Sufiya had made a trip to Vagamon when the terror training camp was on there.

The police had taken into custody five of the 16 SIMI operatives who had taken part in the meeting at Panayikkulam but had released them allegedly due to the intervention of highly influential personalities. It was after the blasts in the various cities that the police sprang into action with regard to the secret meeting again.

The police were of the feeling that the bus-burning incident at Kalamassery, the SIMI camp at the Panayikkulam, the training camp in Vagamon, the blasts in the Indian cities and the killing of four Malayalee militants in Kashmir were all inter-related. The killing of the militants in Kashmir had kicked off the search for the terror network in Kerala, which led to the arrest of several persons, many of whom were reportedly in contact with Madani or his wife Sufiya.

Majeed Parampayi, a key accused in the bus-burning case, had told the police that Sufiya Madani had planned, funded and got executed the burning of the Tamil Nadu bus at Kalamassery as she wanted to give one big blow to the Tamil Nadu authorities for torturing her husband at the prison in Coimbatore.

Majeed had also told the police that she had given him Rs 20,000 as reward after burning the bus. According to reports, the police had even then found that the accused, especially Majeed, had had long telephonic conversations with Sufiya. However, Sufiya and her husband had time and again denied the allegations.

A court in Aluva, acting upon a public interest litigation, had on April 1 asked the Kalamassery police to investigate the alleged role of Sufiya Madani in the bus-burning incident. The police are presently in the process of the probe and the report is to be submitted in the court on or before June 1.

However, the actual probe had started only after April 16, the day of polling in Kerala for the 15th Lok Sabha elections, allegedly due to the intervention by political leaders as the CPI(M) is in electoral alliance with Madani’s PDP. According to reports, the police are unlikely to submit the full probe report by June 1 and will resort to filing a preliminary report by then.