But the most pressing threat to India comes from Lashkar operatives who will not have to cross the oceans or scale the mountains across the Line of Control. Key leaders of Indian Mujahideen — the terrorist network responsible for a string of urban bombings since 2005 — escaped a nationwide police hunt which led to the arrest of over 80 of its operatives in six states.
If the Indian Mujahideen is indeed planning further strikes, two men are most likely central to its plans: Riyaz Bhatkal, who organised the quasi-industrial production of the ready-to-assemble ammonium nitrate-based ‘u’-shaped bombs used in its bombing campaign, and the man tasked by the Lashkar’s central commanders to link these units together, Mumbai-based SIMI operative Abdul Subhan Usman Qureshi.
Bhatkal—the son of the owner of a leather-tanning factory in Mumbai’s Kurla area — was part of the circle of student Islamists who joined the Students Islamic Movement of India around 1998. Like others in SIMI, Bhatkal believed that the problems confronting India’s Muslims were the consequence of secular modernity — and that the answer lay in fighting to create an Islamic state. Along with his elder brother Iqbal Bhatkal, a qualified cleric who also practised Unani medicine, Bhatkal became a key figure at SIMI’s Mumbai office.
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5:48 AM
Moderate Islamist here
