Police and intelligence services know Shah Rukh is tall, fair, speaks good Hindi and isn't a movie star. But bar these next-to-useless facts, almost nothing is known about the man, who is thought to have run a secret Karnataka bomb factory, which supplied the disassembled improvised explosive device kits used by Indian Mujahideen (IM) terror cells nationwide.Ever since the September 19 encounter in New Delhi's Jamia Nagar area, which claimed the life of IM operatives Atif Amin and Mohammad Sajid, Shah Rukh has turned off his cellphone, and broken contact with other jihadists. Police believe he is a key player in efforts by IM operatives -- who have escaped a recent nationwide counter-terrorism sweep, including top organiser Mohammad Subhan Qureshi, mafioso-turned jihadist Riaz Batkal and Students Islamic Movement of India leader Qayamuddin Kapadia -- to stage a fresh series of bombings.
Southern jihadist Shah Rukh, the Karnataka Police suspect, is a critical figure in a still-unidentified south India cell of the IM which, more likely than not, carried out the July 25 serial bombings in Bangalore. In a manifesto issued after the serial bombing of Jaipur this summer, the IM had said its north India operations were being carried out by the Mahmood Ghaznavi Brigade, named after the 11th century warlord who ruled over parts of present-day Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and India.
Based on the interrogation of IM suspects, investigators now say the Mahmood Ghaznavi Brigade was in fact the Delhi-based cell commanded by Amina group of Uttar Pradesh men entrusted with the operational execution of the terrorist network's bombings. However, the Jaipur manifesto also referred to the existence of a unit to attack southern India, the Shahabuddin Ghauri Brigade. It appears to have been named in memory of Muizzuddin Muhammad bin Sam -- the 10th century general of the Ghauri empire, who defeated Privthviraj Chauhan at Tarain in 1192 and laid the foundations for the establishment of the Delhi Sultanate.
Last week, the Bangalore police held Mohammed Samee Bangewadi, a Bijapur-based engineering student, who is alleged to have been part of a jihadist cell which was planning to bomb western tourists Goa last winter. Bangewadi, Karnataka Police sources told The Hindu, had been under discreet surveillance ever since the arrest, last year, of the jihad cell's leader, Pakistan-trained Lashkar-e-Taiba operative Raziuddin Nasir. While media accounts have suggested Bangewadi participated in the Bangalore bombings, there is, in fact, little evidence so far to bear out the proposition. However, investigators suspect that the attacks involved some of the dozens of Karnataka and Kerala men thought to have trained at SIMI-organised jihad camps in 2007-08.
Karnataka investigators have also been able to establish that IM strategist Qureshi visited and met with still-unidentified jihadists at Bijapur on July 12. Later, Qureshi is believed spoken to Bangewadi to discuss means to route funds meant for the legal defence of members of the Karnataka jihadi cell. Finding out who Qureshi met on his visit to Bijapur could help locate the missing southern module of the Indian Mujahideen.
Much of what is known about the IM's bomb-factory -- which supplied the components for the near-identical improvised explosive devices used in Lucknow, Varanasi, Jaipur, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Surat and Delhi -- has come from the interrogation of Mohammad Saif, one of several Azamgarh men arrested from New Delhi after the Jamia Nagar encounter.
Delhi Police investigators say that Saif, along with still-missing IM operative Shadab Malik, brought the disassembled components that were put together to make the 10 IEDs for use in Delhi -- curved metal plates, which were used to direct the explosive; detonators; timers; and ammonium nitrate power.
Investigators found Saif had travelled on the New Delhi-Mangalore Mangala Express on August 26 to Mangalore, where he checked in at the New Broadway Hotel under the pseudonym Rahul Sharma. Soon after, they made three phone calls to Shah Rukh from public telephones, and finally arranged to meet at the Manipal University campus. Shah Rukh handed Saif and Shadab a bag with the IED components, which were then assembled under Amin's supervision in New Delhi. Identical tactics were used in Rajasthan and Gujarat, investigators say.
Behind the door of the Dani Limba safehouse used by Amin in the weeks before the bombings, police found a detailed circuit diagram, which demonstrated just how the disassembled components were to be wired together.