Kerala wants ban on SIMI to continue

Kerala wants the ban on Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) to continue in the context of its continued presence in the State despite the 11-year-old ban. An affidavit has already been submitted in this regard and the matter would come up before the tribunal handling matters associated with SIMI when it holds its sitting in Thiruvananthapuram on Thursday.

The report prepared by the Internal Security Wing to be submitted to the tribunal headed by Justice VK Shali, says that though the police had not come across incidents of secret meetings or training camps as had happened before 2008, several raids had yielded pamphlets and other materials.

It also says that investigations carried out after the incident of the chopping off of the right hand of a college professor in July, 2010 had found the presence of SIMI in a minimum of eight incidents that took place after 2008. It is said that most activists of the SDPI, the organization responsible for the hand-chopping incident, were former SIMI operatives.

The report says that SIMI could be active in the State in the form of other organizations and that its presence is possible in certain mainstream political parties. According to the police, the recent incident of leakage of a police letter to the Press regarding a move to snoop on certain email accounts points to the presence of extremists in the State.

SIMI, which originally emerged as the students’ wing of the Jama’at-e-Islami Hind (JIH) in an effort to augment the Students’ Islamic Organization (SIO) but later became a Frankenstein for the (JIH) following disputes over international developments, had been very active in Kerala prior to its ban in 2001.

According to Intelligence agencies, the preliminary plans of most of the LeT terror attacks carried out in Indian cities in 2008 were prepared at the SIMI camp held at Panayikkulam near Kochi on August 15, 2006. The banned outfit had also held a training camp at high-altitude Vagamon hill resorts in Idukki district in December 2007 in preparation for terror strikes.

Meanwhile, State Power Minister Aryadan Muhammad, veteran Congress leader from Nilambur in Muslim-majority Malappuram district, said that operatives of extremist organizations had been infiltrating into certain mainstream political parties. “These are very dangerous organizations,” he said.

“I can name these organizations. They are the NDF (presently Popular Front of India), SDPI… then SIMI… Most of these organizations come under the Jama’at-e-Islami,” Aryadan said in Kozhikode on Sunday, adding that it was easy for their operatives to infiltrate into of certain parties, allegedly in reference to the Muslim League, second largest party in the ruling UDF.

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