The Harkat-ul Jihadi al-Islami (HuJI) is one of the most feared terrorist organisations in the subcontinent which has been involved in carrying out attacks across major cities in South Asia, especially in India. The group’s module in the country was earlier run by Shahid Bilal of down-country Hyderabad, but his death in a day-time shootout by unidentified gunmen in Pakistan’s Karachi four years ago saw HuJI’s operations of HuJI being taken over by his close associate Mohammed Ajmal.
Bilal had fled from India in 2002 for Bangladesh. He then went to Pakistan for training. He was recruited to HuJI by his maternal uncle Farhatullah Gori, a known operative of Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM). The operations of HuJI started in India in the early 1990s when the operations were controlled by Mohammed Ilyas Kashmiri.
Bilal, after completing his training and gaining expertise in recruiting cadre for HuJI, returned to Hyderabad in 2005 to personally mastermind the attack at Special Task Force (STF) headquarters. He was a resident of the Misram Bagh area of the Andhra Pradesh capital.
Although the group is based in Karachi, it has had close links with Lashkar-e-Taiba, Hizbul Mujahideen and JeM. According to intelligence agencies, the ISI controls HuJI and helps recruit its cadre from Bangladesh and India, primarily from Hyderabad, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat and Maharashtra. The new Sheikh Hasina government in Bangladesh cracking down on Islamic radical groups forced HuJI to look at India to pull off more spectacular operations.
The outfit apart from being involved in the blast at Delhi High Court on Wednesday, HuJi was involved in the attack on the American Centre in Kolkata on January 22, 2002; the murder of former Gujarat home minister Haren Pandya a year later; and had also carried out attack on former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in October 2007 in Karachi.
Intelligence agencies suspect that HuJI was also instrumental in setting up Indian Mujahideen (IM) in India at the behest of Bashir Ahmed Mir, the commander in chief of HuJI in India, who was killed in a gunbattle with the Indian army in Doda district of Kashmir in January 2008. Security agencies believe Mir planned the original plan to carry out blasts in Mumbai trains, besides in Jaipur and Ahmedabad and the serial blasts in Delhi; but they were executed by members of the IM.
Significantly, Qari Saifullah Akhtar, the person who formed HuJI along with his two associates Maulana Irshad Ahmed and Maulana Abdus Samad Sial, are graduates of Banuri Masjid in Karachi, the same school where Hmed commander-in-chief Maulana Masood Azhar also studied. Azhar was arrested in Kashmir, but India had to free him in exchange of passenger when Indian Airlines flight IC-814 was hijacked from Kathmandu and taken to Afghanistan’s Kandahar in end-1999.
Intelligence agencies also believe that close ties between Qari Saifullah Akhtar and Taliban chief Mullah Omar led the Taliban chief to join hands with Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden. Akhtar and Omar became friends while fighting Russians in Afghanistan.
After being deported from Dubai to Pakistan in 2004 where he was hiding, Akhtar was against arrested on February 25, 2008, along with his two sons in Karachi on charges of masterminding attack on Bhutto. Lack of evidence prompted the trial court to release him on March 26, 2008 — a month after his arrest.
