Since July, when Bangalore and then other cities were hit by chain after chain of blasts, Pune has seen the arrest of 15 SIMI and Indian Mujahideen (IM) members, some residents of Pune, the rest visiting the city on various assignments.
The Pune police, however, seemed unaware of it till the arrests were made. Till the Mumbai crime branch disclosed that the IM had a full-fledged “media wing”, an explosive assembly unit and a “control room” at Ashoka Mews apartment complex in Kondhwa, the city police knew nothing of it, though the control room had been in use for a year.
Asked if the Pune police had failed to collect information about the control room, DC (special branch) Ravindra Sengaonkar took the “understaffed” line that the police have been taking whenever anything has gone wrong.
“We have only 7,000 cops against a population of 50 lakh. Information about terror suspects can be collected effectively only if citizens are alert and pass on inputs to the police.”
A senior officer from an intelligence agency said that city police stations were negligent about inputs about jehadi movements that they received from sources. “Many times, the police chowky staff neither verified the inputs properly nor did they forward this information to the special branch. It might be because of the load on the local police like heavy bandobast duties and significant growth in routine crimes like thefts, robberies and domestic disputes,” the officer said.
State ATS chief Hemant Karkare conceded there was no arrest by Pune police, but said they were working on some inputs. “We have increased surveillance in Pune. We may take help from Pune police whenever needed,” he said.
When the Gujarat and Bangalore police and the state Anti Terrorism Squad arrested some key SIMI and IM members with Pune links, the city police had again seemed to have been caught unawares.
In fact, the last time the city police caught any member of SIMI was in 2001. A few SIMI members including local leader Sajid Sundke were arrested in March 2001 for their alleged involvements in communal riots in Ghorpade Peth and Ganj Peth.
This despite the fact that intelligence agencies have always maintained that a jihadi movement in Pune had hit an upward curve with a majority of the activities centred around Kondhwa, Camp, Khadki, Ghorpadi, Ganj Peth and the outskirts of the city.
In 2002, three youths from Pune were arrested in connection with Mulund blasts. Then, in 2003, Anwar Ali, an Urdu scholar working as ad hoc lecturer at the National Defence Academy in Pune was arrested for allegedly providing shelter to LeT and SIMI activists connected to Mulund blasts.
In 2006, Sohail Shaikh of Bhimpura, Pune Camp, a suspected SIMI activist, was arrested in Pune by the state ATS in connected with 7/11 Mumbai local train blasts. Rizwan Davare, the prime suspect in the train blasts was also from Pune.
Investigations revealed that the process of indoctrinating the Pune youths into jihadi culture was on in Pune during this period, even after SIMI was banned in September 2001. But since the March 2001 riots, the Pune police had only 48 names of SIMI suspects on their official record.
The police were jolted out of their inertia when the state ATS unit busted a SIMI module with the arrest of four youths in the city after the Ahmedabad blasts and police commissioner Satyapal Singh ordered the special branch officers to upgrade the list of SIMI suspects in the city. The number of SIMI suspects then went over 300.