Al-Umma outfit raising its ugly head again?

A possible re-emergence of the banned Muslim outfit, Al-Umma, the perpetrators of the ghastly Coimbatore serial blasts in February 1998 which was tar­geted at BJP leader L K Advani at an election rally, has flummoxed investigators probing last week’s Bangalore bomb blast, with one of the suspects arrested early on Tuesday in Madurai having an Al-Umma past.

Intelligence sleuths and investigators are particularly interested in ‘Kitchen’ Bhuhari for his links with the proscribed organisation. Bhuhari runs an NGO and works for a small construction firm in Tirunelveli, top police sources in Chennai said. His wife Jameela Banu has filed a habeas corpus petition at the local court in Madurai.

Bhuhari was a prime accused in the Coimbatore blasts case, but was acquitted for want of evidence. However, he was convicted in the murder case of a Hindu bakery owner in Tirunelveli and had served an eight-year jail term at Coimbatore prison. He was released a couple of years ago.

Sources said Bhuhari had fallen off the radar, but had resurfaced during investigations into the Malleswaram blast case. Significantly, all the three arrested in Tamil Nadu — Peer Mohiddeen alias Peer, Basheer alias Sunnati Basheer and Kitchen Bhuhari alias Bhugari — who are being questioned by the Karnataka police team in co-ordination with the Tamil Nadu Q-Branch Police and the National Investigation Agency officers — “are all from Tirunelveli area down South.”

Pockets of extremism

In the early 1990s, a suburb of Tirunelveli was one of the pockets of Islamic extremism.

Top intelligence sleuths told Deccan Herald that after one of its last leaders, Imam Ali, was gunned down along with four of his associates at a hideout in Sanjay Nagar, Bangalore, by a joint Karnataka and Tamil Nadu police team on September 29, 2002, the outfit had fizzled out. There were no known activities of the group. However, with the arrest of Bhuhari and the other two arrested, also hailing from Melapalayam in Tirunelveli district, intelligence sleuths are flummoxed and are looking at whether Al-Umma has regrouped.

A senior intelligence officer from the State told Deccan Herald that the arrests indicated that some remnants of the outfit may have regrouped lately in a bid to revive under some other name. He said chances of the old members of the group joining other extremist organisations were also not ruled out.

He said the main plank of Al-Umma in its hey days was targeting the Hindutva right. Its former targets include the RSS office, BJP leaders including L K Advani, local Hindu right leaders of Hindu Makkal Kathchi and Hindu Munnani. He said in Malleswaram, too, the target was the BJP State headquarters ‘Jagannath Bhavan’ and this was a characteristic target of Al-Umma, if it were to be active today.

Significantly, as Chief Minister J Jayalalitha moved the demands for grants for the Home Department under her charge in the Tamil Nadu Assembly on Tuesday, she revealed that a special division had been created in the State police department to monitor fundamentalist organisations, including banned outfits like Al-Umma, after the Coimbatore blasts.

Wahadat-e-Islami Hind

Further, Tamil Nadu has also banned the All India Jihad Committee and Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). But SIMI, is regrouping under the banner of Wahadat-e-Islami Hind, Jayalalitha said.