With elections due in summer, and rising political rhetoric on law and order, security and subversion and mobilization of caste and communal 'vote banks', this communally sensitive, can only face more troubling times ahead.
A report, prepared by the Additional Director General of Police, Padman Singh, on November 27, 2006,details terrorist-related crimes in 17 of UP’s 70 districts. The affected districts are: Meerut, Kheri, Lucknow, Aligarh, Gorakhpur, Agra, Jhansi, Saharanpur, Muzaffarnagar, Fatehpur, Rampur, Kanpur, Ghaziabad, Bijnor, Faizabad, Jaunpur and Varanasi. Geographically, terrorist groups have reportedly infiltrated into all the regions of thestate. The report elaborates further that recent trends demonstrate the involvement of technically qualified youth in terrorist activity. Trends alsoindicate "ability to operate autonomously in small cells, deadly use of explosive devices, careful selection of soft and hard targets and willingness to inflict mass casualties."
Earlier, on November 24, 2006, the Inspector General of Police of the Special Task Force (STF) in UP, JagmohanYadav, stated that UP had emerged as one of the major centres of the activities of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and its proxy terrorist groups in India. Yadav disclosed that ISI-trained Indian ‘sleeper modules’ had even infiltrated small towns of thestate, adding that both the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) and Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) had spread their tentacles in UP, with Meerut, Almorah, Baghpat, Phoolpur and several other cities emerging as hubs of ISI activities. The trend has been noted by others who follow terrorism closely, and,as Praveen Swami noted in March 2006: "Since 2001, Uttar Pradesh has seen the interdiction of at least 22 cells linked to Pakistan-based jehadi groups, in operations which led to the elimination of 10 terrorists, mainly Pakistani nationals, and 34 arrests."
Electoral considerations, clearly, appear to be influencing the state government, where astate Home Department spokesperson stated in May 2006 that since the organisation was not involved in "any activities" and neither had UP received any complaint against SIMI, it would not support the continuation of the ban. Further, in the first week of June 2006, the Sunni Central Waqf Board in UP appointed Mohammad Ismail Syed Shareef, a leather industrialist and a known SIMI sympathizer, as the caretaker and manager of Kanpur city's oldest and biggest seminary — the Jaam-e-Uloom. And thestate government successfully moved an application in a district court in Baharaich seeking withdrawal of cases against SIMI chief Shahid Badar Falah, which, on September 6, 2006, granted permission to withdraw a treason case against him and 11 other members of the outfit. Further, SAIR had noted in July 2006
Mohammad Aamir, the chief of SIMI's Uttar Pradesh state unit and the prime accused in the Kanpur riots of March 16, surrendered before a metropolitan magistrate on April 25 after spending a night with the police. Before the media could get a whiff of the surrender, Aamir, who is believed to have spent almost a year in terrorist training camps in Bangladesh, was ensconced in the barracks of Kanpurjail. With pressure to act against Aamir mounting, the surrender proved a convenient way out for thestate government, after an earlier plan for his surrender in March was aborted on grounds of political expediency.
March 7: At least 21 civilians were killed and 62 injured in three serial bomb explosions at the Sankat Mochan temple and the railway station in Varanasi. Seven bombs were later defused, including four that had been planted on the Gowdolia-Dasashwamedh Ghat Road near the Kashi Vishwanathtemple. Hours after the blasts in Varanasi, a suspected LeT terrorist was shot dead in an encounter with the police in Gosaiganj area on the outskirts of Lucknow city.
April 5: Police arrested HuJI cadre, Wali Ullah, a mastermind of the March 7-serial blasts in Varanasi, and five of his accomplices, Mehboob Ali, Syed Shuaib Hussain, Farhan, Mohammad Rizwan Siddique and Mohammad Saad Ali, from different parts of UttarPradesh.
September 13: An alleged ISI agent, Tasneem, was arrested by the Anti-Terrorist Force in connection with the September 8-bomb blasts inMalegaon.
December 28: Police arrested two alleged ISI agents, Abdul Shakoor and Adeel Anjum alias Adil, and disclosed that both had entered India after receiving training in Pakistan. The duo, residents of Multan in Pakistan, was arrested from Kaiserbagh inLucknow.
In all, 46 incidents of reported subversion in UP have been documented by SAIR between April 2001-December 2006. Nevertheless, the Samajwadi Party-led UPgovernment remains in a denial mode, and has sought to brush SIMI’s role and activities under the carpet.
These various factors underline the significant and rising threat of subversive forces in UP, emanating from both within thestate and outside the country. It is useful to note that such subversion occurs in a milieu of a broad retreat ofgovernance, marked by high levels of the breakdown in law and order in the state. According to the National Crime Records Bureau, UP reported the highest incidence of violent crimes in 2005, accounting for 12.5 percent of total violent crimes in the country (25,352 out of 2,02,640). UP also reported 17.5 per cent (5,711 out of 32,719) of total Murder cases in the country, and 20.1 percent (5,637 out of 28,031) total Attempt to Murder cases.
With elections due in the summer of 2007, and a continuous exacerbation of political rhetoric on the issue of law and order, security and subversion, on the one hand, and efforts at the mobilization of narrow caste and communal ‘vote banks’, this communally sensitive, largest and most populousstate can only face more troubling times ahead.
Ajit Kumar Singh isResearch Assistant, Institute for Conflict Management Courtesy, the South Asia Intelligence Review of the South Asia Terrorism Portal