Growing connection between two outlawed groups

Banned Islamic group and Maoists said to form allianceThey may be strange ideological bedfellows, but SIMI extremists and Maoist insurgents appear to be working together, according to Indian officials.
By Chandan Das for Khabar South Asia in Jamshedpur
January 05, 2013

The banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) and Maoist rebels have formed an alliance in the past four years, with SIMI financially aiding the Naxalite insurrection and even helping the rebels elude capture by government forces in 2012, West Bengal Director General of Police Naparajit Mukherjee said in an interview.

At a November meeting in New Delhi between Union Home Secretary R. K. Singh and chief secretaries and directors general of police from nine Indian states affected by the Maoist insurgency, Mukherjee became the first senior security official to bring the SIMI-Maoist connection out into the open and document it.

For four years, he told Khabar South Asia, Indian security services have been tracking and trying to foil a growing connection between the two outlawed groups, which have starkly different ideologies. Islamist extremists oppose secularism and wish to impose a strict interpretation of sharia law, while Maoism is atheistic and regards religion as a reactionary force.

"I have told the Union Home Secretary that several above-board groups owing allegiance to the Maoists have teamed up with certain elements of (SIMI) and are prompting the common people to revolt against the government," Mukherjee said.

He informed Singh and other officials who attended the meeting that SIMI was aiding the Maoists in at least three of West Bengal’s districts that border Bangladesh.

"Investigations by the police and intelligence agencies have revealed that while the SIMI has been successful in establishing a strong link with the Maoists in a number of states, the nexus is the strongest in West Bengal," Singh told Khabar. “As West Bengal shares a 4,095km-long border with Bangladesh, the logistics work fine for both banned outfits in this state."

SIMI and the Maoists (CPI) -- which formed in 2004 through the merger of two ultra-leftist groups, the People’s War Group and the Maoist Communist Centre – have been working together since 2008. Indian authorities first learned about the connection following the 2010 arrest in Karnataka state of a Dubai-based operative suspected of circulating counterfeit money in Karnataka and the neighboring state of Kerala, Mukherjee said.

In 2010, according to to R. K. Meena, Director of Naxal Management for the Ministry of Home Affairs, police in New Delhi arrested a suspected Kashmir-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) operative for allegedly trying to arrange alliance-building meetings between SIMI and leaders of the Maoist rebel group.

"During interrogation, [he] revealed that he was sent to India to try and pass on funds to the Maoists through the SIMI," Meena told Khabar.

"A HuJI (Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami) operative … who was also arrested by the police in the same year, also pled guilty that he had come from Kashmir to hold talks with the Maoists," he added.

Around that time, Indian police and paramilitary forces launched multiple operations aimed at crushing the Maoist movement, officials said. By early 2012, security forces had cornered the Naxalites, by cutting off their supplies of food, armaments and cash and forcing them to starve in their tropical forest hideaways.

But then SIMI intervened.

"It was at this crucial juncture that the SIMI activists stepped into the picture," Meena said. "As all the dedicated routes of the Maoists were blocked by the forces, stopping the arms and even food supplies to the rebels, the SIMI activists … extended a helping hand to the Naxalites by offering their international routes to smuggle in arms and ammunition from foreign sources." (Courtesy:Khabar South Asia)