Safdar Nagori, mastermind of the 2008 Ahmedabad blasts who was handed the death penalty along with 37 others, has shown no remorse for his dastardly act while stating that the Quran was supreme for him and the Indian Constitution meant nothing to him.

Nagori remorseless for his act

Nagori hails from Madhya Pradesh’s (MP) Mahidpur located in Ujjain District and is currently lodged in the Bhopal Central Jail from where he attended the proceedings of the Ahmedabad special court through video conferencing. He was arrested from a flat in Indore on March 26, 2008, and he had been lodged in various jails since then. He was the general secretary of the banned Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) who was named as the key conspirator by the prosecution. Nagori had been accused of collecting funds for besides being involved in other illegal activities of SIMI that facilitated the Ahmedabad blasts that took 56 innocent lives.

Dinesh Nargawe the Superintendent of Bhopal Central Jail quoted Nagori as saying “The Constitution does not count for me. For me, the decisions of the Koran are supreme”. As per sources, his father was an assistant sub-inspector in the MP Police Crime Branch. His brush with the law began in 1997 when a criminal case was filed against him in Ujjain’s Mahakal Police Station and he has about 100 criminal cases against him.

SIMI, Indian Mujahideen and Safdar Nagori story

That Nagori gives precedence to the Quran over the constitution is certainly not surprising in view of the fact that the main aim of SIMI was to convert Bharat into Dar-Ul-Islam and had declared Jihad against Bharat. The Islamist fundamentalist organization was founded in Uttar Pradesh’s Aligarh on April 25, 1977, by US-based academic Mohammad Ahmadullah Siddiqi, Professor of Journalism and Public Relations at the Western Illinois University Macomb, Illinois, USA.

It was initially the student wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind (JIH) but was abandoned by them when SIMI opposed Yasser Arafat who was hailed as a champion of the Palestinian cause by JIH. Governing human life on the basis of the ‘Holy Quran’, Propagation of Islam, and Jehad for the cause of Islam are the objectives of the organization.

Talking about SIMI/IM, South Asia Terrorism Portal notes:

SIMI also attempts to utilize the youth in the propagation of Islam and also to mobilize support for Jihad and establish a Shariat-based Islamic rule through “Islami Inqulab”. As the organization does not believe in a nation-state, it does not believe in the Indian Constitution or the secular order. SIMI also regards ‘idol worship’ (murti puja) as a sin and considers it to be a holy duty to terminate idol worship.

SIMI is widely believed to be against Hinduism, western beliefs and ideals, as well as other ‘anti-Islamic cultures’. Among its various objectives, the SIMI aims to counter what it believes is the increasing moral degeneration, sexual anarchy in the Indian society as also the ‘insensitiveness’ of a ‘decadent’ west. Ideologically, SIMI maintains that the concepts of secularism, democracy and nationalism, keystones of the Indian Constitution, are antithetical to Islam. Parallel to its rejection of secularism, democracy and nationalism is its oft-repeated objective of restoration of the ‘khilafat’, emphasis on ‘ummah’ (Muslim brotherhood), and the need for a Jehad to establish the supremacy of Islam…

…SIMI reportedly secures generous financial assistance from the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), Riyadh, and also maintains close links with the International Islamic Federation of Students’ Organizations (IIFSO) in Kuwait. It also receives generous funds from contacts in Pakistan. 

The Chicago-based Consultative Committee of Indian Muslims is also reported to have supported SIMI morally and financially.

The SIMI has links with the Jamaat-e-Islam (JeI) units in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal. It also has a close working relationship with the Islami Chhatra Shibir (ICS), the students’ wing of the JeI in Bangladesh. The SIMI is also alleged to have close links with the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen (HM), and the ISI…

…Groups of SIMI sympathizers reportedly exist in several places in the Gulf States. Jamayyatul Ansar, an organisation of SIMI activists comprising expatriate Indian Muslims, reportedly operates in Saudi Arabia.

Several Islamist fundamentalist organisations in India are allegedly controlled by former SIMI cadres. Prominent among them are the Kerala-based National Democratic Front and Islamic Youth Centre (IYC), and the Tamil Nadu Muslim Munnetra Kazhagam (TMMK) in Tamil Nadu…

…Opposed to democracy, secularism and nationalism, SIMI has been advocating among its followers – some 400 ansars (full-time cadres) and the 20,000 ordinary members – the need to oppose “man-made” institutions and work for the Ummah.

Shahid Badar Falah was the organization’s National President and Nagori was the General Secretary till it was proscribed under the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2002. Nagori is said to have established connections with Pakistan’s ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) operatives and leaders of other radical Islamist organizations in an attempt to revive SIMI cadres by setting up a new outfit.

The Indian Mujahideen (IM) was a loose network of Islamic organizations such as SIMI, Uttar Pradesh natives connected with HuJI (Harkat ul-Jihad-e-Islami), and Aftab Ansari’s terror group. Mumbai’s Abdul Subhan Usman Qureshi is believed to be the main man behind IM and it was Qureshi who signed the IM manifestos that were emailed before and after multiple blasts in 2008.

“According to Mumbai police intelligence, by 1998, Qureshi was one of the most committed SIMI activists going on to edit one of SIMI’s house magazines, Islamic Voice, from New Delhi. By then, SIMI’s growing links with global Islamic movements like the Egyptian Brotherhood and Hamas were clear. Links with Bangladesh-based HuJI and Pakistan-based LeT were also coming to the fore. The radicalization process of SIMI became clearer by its 1999 Aurangabad convention when SIMI activists Mohammad Amir Shakeel Ahmad stated that “Islam is our nation, not India”. Qureshi was one of the principal organizers of SIMI’s last public conference in 2001 in which 25,000 young people participated. He also succeeded in training hundreds of SIMI-IM cadres since 2007”, writes Namrata Goswami.

Even though the connection between IM and Pakistan-based LeT was crystal clear, the IM attempted to establish itself as a purely India-based terror outfit. This was done to ensure that resources of Bharat’s security forces were expended within the country, Pakistan could escape diplomatic pressure from Bharat as well as the international community, and most importantly to establish the credibility of IM that would make it easier to lure and radicalize the youth.

The major aim of outfits such as SIMI, IM, and other similar radical Islamist organizations is to launch a full-fledged war against the Bharatiya state. Appeasement politics of ‘secular’ governments further aided the cause of terrorists such as Nagori. We are seeing a repeat of radicalizing the younger generation in the CFI/PFI game plan which appears to be taking a less direct route as compared to SIMI in achieving the objective of Dar-ul-Islam.

(Featured Image Source: India TV)