The proscribed Deendar Anjuman, Karnataka’s home-grown extremist sect, is now under the intelligence radar.
The security establishment in Bangalore has gone into a tizzy. The revelation that Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) had forged links with subversive activities in India, especially those behind the blasts at M Chinnaswamy Stadium on April 17, has forced them to go back to old dusty files to find out the spread of this agency’s tentacles in the city.
“Why the security agencies and Indian intelligence are shocked with the recent ISI-underworld-extremist combine is because the agencies now fear that the remnants of old outfits like Deendar Anjuman are believed to be strengthening their bases here,” sources in the intelligence told DNA.
The security and intelligence agencies have now been forced to sift through old files on some of the most notorious elements in the past, who unleashed terror in South India, and were known to have links with the ISI.
It has emerged that one of the prominent outfits is Deendar Anjuman (DA), having headquarters in Multan, Pakistan, and was clandestinely operating from Gulbarga in Karnataka and Hyderabad in Andhra Pradesh. The security establishment is particularly worried over the revelation of ISI forging links with Maoists through agents of the underworld to create subversive activities.
Deendar Anjuman’s subversive activities came to light after 13 bomb explosions rocked various places of worship in Andhra Pradesh, Goa and Karnataka between May and July of 2000.
A series of raids in the aftermath of the blasts revealed that hundreds of DA operatives including Syed Khalid Uz Zaman, the sect’s South India chief, travelled to Pakistan to receive arms training from the ISI. A special court in Bangalore granted death sentence to 11 members of DA on November 29, 2008 for their involvement in the church blasts. Twelve more operatives received life imprisonment. The outfit was banned on April 27, 2000 under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act.
The security agencies’ fear is fuelled by the likelihood of the presence of several more DA sympathisers. “The membership in these groups might have risen following the lack of watch over its activities which hit a low after the arrests in 2000. But we still feel it is time to revisit the database and shake ourselves out of slumber. We are sure to stumble upon some material on the ISI’s South India connections again,” an officer said.
Hazrat Moulana Deendar Channabasaveshwara Siddiqui, formed the currently proscribed Deendar Anjuman sect in 1924 in Bellampet, in Gulbarga district. Until the 2000 church blasts, the outfit was believed to be based on Sufism.
Syed Zia-ul-Hassan, the founder’s son and the current spiritual head, is alleged to have masterminded the 2000 blasts. He reportedly migrated to Pakistan after the Partition and is believed to be based in Peshawar.
Hassan is also alleged to have floated a terrorist outfit, the Jamaat-e-Hizbul Mujahideen in Pakistan.
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