Elusive Simi operative deported from Dubai

New Delhi, Aug 4 (DHNS): Elusive for the past six years, a 29-year-old youth allegedly part of the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (Simi) arms training camp held in Wagamon in Kottayam district, Kerala, in December 2007 was deported from Dubai.

With this, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) has apprehended 35 accused, while a hunt is on for three others. Most of the arrested are also booked for their alleged involvement in the 2008 Gujarat serial blasts.

Abdul Sathar alias Manzoor, from Aluva in Kerala, was deported from Dubai on Friday. He was produced before the special NIA court in Ernakulam on Saturday which sent him to 14 days judicial custody.

The NIA will approach the court on Monday to seek Sathar’s custody and plans to take him to other places for gathering evidence. Of the 40 people who attended the camp, Sathar is one of the four accused who are from Kerala.

As Sathar evaded arrested and slipped out of the country, the NIA got an Interpol red alert notice issued against him. He was also declared a proclaimed offender.

He is the third Indian to be deported from the Arab Gulf countries in the past one year, the first being Abu Jundal, who is an accused in the 26/11 case and Fasih Mohammed, accused in the Bangalore and Delhi terror attacks case, four months later from Saudi Arabia.

Aftab Ansari, convicted in the Kolkata American Centre attack case, was deported from Dubai in 2002.

After the case was transferred to the NIA in 2010, it registered a case alleging that Simi conducted a three-day training camp where the cadre underwent a course in physical training, arms training, rope climbing, rock climbing, motorbike racing and manufacture of petrol bombs. The Kerala Police were the first to register a case in 2008.

It was also alleged in the NIA FIR that speeches were made in the camp about carrying out jihad in India and incited the participants to wage war against the country.

The agency had filed a charge sheet in the case in a special court in 2011 in which Simi chief Safdar Nagori and others were named.

The NIA had in its charge sheet claimed that it had clinching evidence against the accused. Four of the accused are from Kerala, nine each from Karnataka and Gujarat, and seven from Madhya Pradesh, while the remaining were from Uttar Pradesh.