Bangalore going from hideout to breeding ground

Bangalore going from hideout to breeding ground
Rakesh Prakash | TNN

Bangalore: The failed UK terror plot has changed Bangalore’s brand image in the outside world: From being a ‘safe hideout’ for terrorists, the city is now being seen as a ‘breeding ground’.
The arrest of Bangaloreans Kafeel-Sabeel and Dr Mohammed Haneef marks a change in the way intelligence bodies worldwide view Bangalore on the terror circuit.
“For several years now, Bangalore was seen as the ideal shelter for terrorists and underworld operators. But the UK terror plot has changed that, Bangalore will now be seen as a breeding ground for foot-soldiers of terror networks that have roots in West Asia,” senior police officers, who have handled terrorist operations, contend.
Till 2000, Bangalore’s transition was slow. If late 1970s and mid-80s saw smugglers making the city their temporary homes, the 1990s witnessed Mumbai underworld operators, Andhra Naxals and Tamil extremists taking refuge here. Since 2000, there has been a rise in terror-related activities. The reasons are obvious: They have been inspired by the success of 9/11 attacks, the atrocities of Iraq war, local communal riots and increased movement of students to foreign countries, where they stay closeknit and under the aegis of Islamic organisations.
In fact, the first shot was fired when activists of Deendar Anjuman sect triggered bomb blasts in churches in Bangalore, Gulbarga and Hubli in 2002. Though the police managed to arrest 26 activists and traced the terror origin to Pakistan, the undercurrents in favour of terrorism only grew stronger.
Covert operations by intelligence agencies in the cyber cafes in some Muslim pockets of J C Nagar, BTM Layout and other areas of Bangalore threw up some interesting facts. What the undercover sleuths did was: randomly click on the surfing history on computer terminals in these cafes.
Apart from porn, the most used key words they found were ‘Laden,’ ‘Taliban,’ ‘Saddam’ and ‘Jihad.’ The cafes were located in areas where the education level is either poor or next to non-existent. In some areas, cyber cafes were used to download videos of killings by armed forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. While some came out in the form of VCDs, few videos made rounds in the form of mobile phone MMS. “These videos were aimed at provoking youngsters here,’’ a senior police officer said.
In the meantime, militant infiltration into the state saw a rise. Militants who were being hunted in Kashmir found a home in not just Bangalore and Mysore, but also in towns like Gulbarga, Chintamani and Mulbagal. As Bangalore’s IT sector continued to strike big, intelligence inputs indicated that the city is high on the hit-list of terrorists. The first major strike came in December 2005 when some militants opened fire at IISc campus, killing a scientist and injuring four. The police failed to achieve any breakthrough, but admitted it could have been a dry run conducted to test what kind of international response a terrorist strike in Bangalore would get. Even in the IISc case, the gunman is suspected to be an outsider and not a Bangalorean.
Subsequent arrests of LeT and al-Badr activists revealed that terror groups were gathering information about places in Bangalore and other parts of the state, where chemicals and explosives are easily available. One of the arrested al-Badr activist, Fahad alias Mohammed Koya, was a post-graduate in analytical chemistry.
“These were all pointers to the changing profile of Bangalore on the terror map,’’ the officer said. Now, the arrest of Kafeel and his brother Sabeel has given a new dimension to that image. “We are yet to ascertain whether Kafeel came in terror contact in Bangalore or during his stay in the UK. But it has emerged so far that he organised meetings and distributed hate videos in Bangalore. We suspect there are more Kafeel-like people in the making here,’’ he added.