New Delhi, June 05: The Government declared Indian Mujahideen, believed to be a shadow outfit of banned SIMI and Pakistan-based Lashker-e-Taiba, as a terrorist organisation.
The group, which is also part of Pakistan ISI’s grand plan to attack India under its ‘Karachi Project’, has been involved in a number of strikes in different cities during 2007-10 with the German Bakery at Pune being its latest target in February. Although the police across the country had been taking action against its cadres (mainly Indians) ever since it first claimed responsibility for the serial blasts in Uttar Pradesh through its signature style of sending emails to media in November 2007, the move of declaring it a terrorist organization will remove any legal ambiguity while booking its cadres for terror acts in the country.
“An order has been issued adding Indian Mujahideen, all its formations and front organizations to the existing list of terrorist organizations under a schedule to the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967,” said a home ministry official. The list currently carries the names of all the big terror outfits, including ULFA, LTTE, LeT, Jaish-e-Mohammed, Hizbul Mujahideen, al-Qaeda, Al Badr, CPI (Maoist) and Khalistani and northeastern insurgent groups. Besides, the government had recently also added 100 odd outfits — banned under United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions — from across the globe by putting them together at entry No 33 in the list.
The move of formally declaring IM as a terrorist organization will help the prosecuting agency in getting orders from the court to seize any land, house or any movable and immovable properties belonging to the members of the outfit and its fronts. Besides, anyone associated with the banned terror outfit will be liable for imprisonment ranging from two years to seven years under the UAPA.
An official said: “It will only smoothen the entire process. Earlier, we had been taking action against the IM cadres as ones belonging to a front of the SIMI, which has been in the list of banned outfit for long.”
The IM was founded after a rift in the ranks of SIMI, with one group led by Safdar Nagori sticking to radical militant ideology while the other, led by Mohammed Islam, former chief coordinator of SIMI, preferred a moderate approach.
Indian agencies have enough evidence which suggest that the outfit has full support of ISI through LeT.
-PTI