Jihad’s southern outpost

VR Jayaraj

There is ample evidence to suggest that the ISI has been operating on the ground in Kerala for years, if not decades. To make matters worse, last week’s raid on the house of a Popular Front of India leader have unearthed publicity material bearing the unmistakable imprint of the Taliban and Al Qaeda

Kerala Islamists’ terror connections with Pakistan, and possibly with the Inter-Services Intelligence, go back to the beginning of the 1990s. But the State police — and to an extent the Central authorities — had remained complacent for almost two decades on this matter, thinking that god’s own country had an impregnable shell of social peace and religious harmony. This myth got shattered in October 2008 when security forces killed four LeT recruits from Kerala in Kupwara, Kashmir, in an encounter while they were trying to cross over to Pakistan, obviously for advanced weapons and ideological training in the terror academies run by ISI-backed groups.

The Research and Analysis Wing had come across information that extremists from Kerala terror groups had been going to Pakistan since 1992. In the context of the killing of the four Malayalee terrorists in Kashmir, former RAW director Hormis Tharakan, who had also served as the State’s Director General of Police, revealed that CAM Basheer, a native of Aluva, was the first known terrorist from Kerala to cross over to Pakistan. Interestingly, no security or Intelligence agency in India has any reliable information on the present whereabouts of Basheer.

However, no ordinary citizen, and probably no police or Intelligence official in Kerala had ever expected the extremists’ links with terror dens outside India to be so close to the ISI, Al Qaeda and Taliban as revealed last week in the raids on the houses of leaders of the Popular Front of India (formerly the NDF). Reports say that the Popular Front has been trying to collect evidence from deep inside the Indian Navy. As the question of terrorism in Kerala and its connections with external forces is getting all the more complex, military intelligence is preparing to intervene in the matter.

Instances of the entry into Kerala of economic terrorism, planned and supervised by the ISI, are many. Pakistan-manufactured counterfeit currencies worth several crores have been confiscated at Kerala’s international airports from people coming in from the Gulf. Even the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence admits that the confiscated currencies would not constitute a small percentage of the amount being smuggled in. Sleuths say counterfeit currencies printed at ISI-supervised mints in Quetta and elsewhere in Pakistan are funneled into Kerala by a well-knit gang in Dubai, looked after by none other than Dawood Ibrahim’s kin Anees.

There are evidences to suggest that the ISI has been operating on the ground in Kerala through infiltrators much before the recruitment into LeT of the four Malayalees killed in Kashmir in 2008. A big instance of ISI infiltration into Kerala had come to light after the arrest in Mysore of Muhammad Fahd (30), a Pakistani national with Kerala roots and an Al-Badr coordinator, in October 2006 with an associate, Muhammadali Hussein. There are strong reasons to believe that Fahd, arrested with weapons including AK-47 rifles and components of highly improvised explosive devices, could have assisted in the making of the two bombs that went off in Kozhikode on March 3, 2006. LeT’s South India commander Thadiyantavide Nazeer, the chief perpetrator of the Bangalore bombings, is prime accused in this case. Fahd, an MSc in chemistry, was in Kozhikode visiting his relatives in February and March, 2006. Fahd’s targets included the imposing Vidhan Soudha complex of Bangalore.

However, the most shocking plans of the ISI came to light last week when the Kerala Police raided the house of Mansoor, the Popular Front’s Ernakulam district secretary. The raid unearthed the minutes of the outfit’s meetings, which spoke of plans to monitor the preparedness of the Indian Navy at the Southern Naval Command, Kochi (There were reports that David Headley’s associate Tahawwur Hussein Rana had photographed the Naval installations in Kochi extensively). The plan was to sneak into the Defence exhibition at Kochi’s naval base and collect as much information as possible. However, this plan failed.

That is not all. Sometime back, the Kochi Police had carried out a mock security drill in the city jointly with the Navy, RAW and IB to realistically assess the preparedness of the Forces to counter any terror attack. The documents seized from Mansoor’s house had reportedly contained details of this drill and a declaration that the mock drill would soon become a practical reality, which could only mean that Kochi could witness a terror strike. Security agencies are now asking among themselves the ominous question: Who were behind this?

The raid at Mansoor’s house had reportedly yielded documents that spoke of huge sums of money being pumped into the Popular Front from abroad. Officials say that a cursory look at the documents proved at least Rs 1 crore had been collected in the past one year. Security agencies are now on the trail of these funds. As serious as these revelations is the reported recovery of some disgusting campaign material of Al-Qaeda-Taliban from another Popular Front leader, Kunjumon. These CDs contained visuals of terror men executing the sentences of the Islamic courts of Al Qaeda and Taliban, decapitation of girls and women and repulsive mutilation of their bodies in the midst of cheering terror-mongers. Sleuths say that the Popular Front’s July 4 attack on a college professor at Muvattupuzha was a direct import of this terror method. The professor’s right hand was cut off allegedly for preparing a question paper that blasphemed Prophet Muhammad.

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