The Special Task Force of the Uttar Pradesh (UP) Police, which has beeninvestigating the two explosions at a Hindu temple and a local railway stationat Varanasi on March 7,2006, announced on April 5,2006, that its investigationhas established that the two explosions were carried out by three terrorists ofthe Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami of Bangladesh, known as HUJI (B), with local helpprovided by one Walilullah, the Imam of a mosque at Phulpur inAllahabad, and five other Indians.
While Walilullah and the five other Indians who had helped the three terroristsfrom Bangladesh, have been arrested, the three terrorists, who actually carriedout the explosions, have managed to go back to Bangladesh after carrying out theterrorist strikes. Twenty innocent civilians were killed in the two explosions.The UP Police have described Walilullah as the Eastern UP Area Commander of HUJI(B).
In a confessional statement, Walilullah has reportedly cited the demolition ofthe Babri Masjid in UP in December 1992 by a Hindu mob and the anti-Muslim riotsin Gujarat in February, 2002, as the reasons for the terrorist strikes againstthe temple and at the railway station. He has projected the twin blasts as actsof reprisal terrorism. He has given the names of the three persons, who camefrom Bangladesh to carry out the explosions, as Bashiruddin aliasBashir,Mustafiz and Zakaria, all Bangladeshi nationals. According to hisversion, they had studied along with him at the Deoband seminary in UP someyears ago and he has been in touch with them since then.
Walilullah had once been arrested by the Allahabad Police in 2001 on suspicionof his links with the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM) of Pakistan. He was released aftereight months without being prosecuted. Bashiruddin took him to Bangladesh inJune 2004 and introduced him to one Maulana Asadullah of HUJI (B), who enrolledhim into the organisation and appointed him as its Area Commander for EasternUP.
The other five Indian Muslims arrested are Syed Shuib and Farhaan (Lucknow),Mohammad Rizwan Siddiqui and Mohammad Saad Ali (Amroha) and Shahid (Allahabad).They were working in a power loom in Bhiwandi near Mumbai. All the arrestedIndian Muslims are reported to have confessed that they had visited Pakistan viaBangladesh for training in jihadi terrorism, organised by Maulana Asadullah.
HUJI (B) is the Bangladesh branch of the HUJI of Pakistan, which is headed byQari Saifullah Akhtar, who is presently in jail in Pakistan. He was arrested bythe Pakistani authorities in 1995, when Mrs. Benazir Bhutto was the PrimeMinister, on a charge of involvement with a group of Pakistani army officersheaded by Brig.Zahir-ul-Islam-Abbasi in trying to organise a military coup.Brig.Abbasi used to be the New Delhi station chief of Pakistan's Inter-ServicesIntelligence (ISI) in the Pakistani High Commission and was expelled by theGovernment of India in 1988.The arrested Army officers and the Qari were accusedof planning to have Benazir and Gen.Abdul Wahid Kakkar, the then Chief of theArmy Staff, assassinated and capture power. While the arrested officers weretried before a court-martial and sentenced to various terms of imprisonment, theISI did not prosecute the Qari for reasons which were not clear.
He was released. After his release, he settled down in Kandahar and emerged as akey adviser of Mulla Mohammad Omar, the Amir of the Taliban. The HUJI, under hisleadership, participated in the fight against the Northern Alliance led by thelate Ahmed Shah Masood. Its volunteers also participated in the jihad inthe Central Asian Republics and Chechnya. It came to be known as the PunjabiTaliban.
The HUJI of Pakistan and the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM) led by Maulana FazlurRahman Khalil merged for some time and operated under the name Harkat-ul-Ansar (HUA).They split and started operating again as two different organisations after theUS State Department designated the HUA as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation inOctober,1997. This was done because of suspicion of the involvement of some ofits cadres in the kidnapping of some Western tourists in Jammu & Kashmir in1995 under the name Al Faran.
When the US started its military action in Afghanistan on October 7,2001, in thewake of 9/11, Qari Saifullah Akhtar and his followers crossed over into Pakistanand dispersed to different places. The HUJI was suspected to have been involvedin the kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl, the US journalist, at Karachialong with the HUM (Al-Alami meaning International) in January-February,2002,and in the two attempts to kill President General Pervez Musharraf at Rawalpindiin December,2003, along with the JEM and some lower level officers of the Armyand the Air Force.
The Qari ran away to Dubai to escape arrest. His presence there was detected bythe Dubai authorities in August,2004. They arrested him and handed him over tothe Pakistani authorities, but he has not so far been prosecuted in connectionwith any of these incidents.
The Bangladesh branch of the HUJI came into existence in 1992 after the AfghanMujahideen captured power in Kabul in April,1992, after overthrowing the thenAfghan President Najibullah. It was set up by a group of Bangladeshi nationals,who had fought against the forces of the Najibullah Government after havingundergone jihadi training in Pakistan.The formation of the HUJI (B) wasannounced at a press conference in April 1992 by a group of Afghan warveterans. It was projected as a successor to a first BangladeshiMujahideen group that had been formed in 1984 by Commander Abdur Rahman, forfighting against the Soviet troops in Afghanistan.He later reportedly died inthe Afghan War in 1989.
Among the founding fathers of the HUJI (B) are Shaikhul Hadith, AllamaAzizul Haq, who is also associated with the Islami Oikyo Jote (IOJ), amember of the present ruling coalition headed by Begum Khalida Zia, MuhammadHabibur Rahman of Sylhet, Ataur Rahman Khan of Kishoreganj, Sultan Jaok ofChittagong, Abdul Mannan of Faridpur and Habibullah of Noakhali. All of them aremembers of different Islamic organisations and madrasas. Ataur Rahman Khanwas reportedly elected to the Parliament as a candidate of Begum KhalidaZia's Bangladesh National Party (BNP) in 1991.
All of them visited Afghanistan in 1988 before the withdrawal of the Soviettroops and met, amongst others, Osama bin Laden. An account of their travel toAfghanistan at the invitation of the HUJI of Pakistan was given by HabiburRahman in an interview to an Islamic journal called "Islami Biplob"(Islamic Revolution), which was published by the journal on August 20,1998.Habibur Rahman is also the convenor of Sahaba Sainik Parishad and thefounding principal of the Jameya Madania Islamia, a madrasa at Kazir Bazar,Sylhet.
He said in the interview: