Not just 8, all 29 SIMI men planned to escape Khandwa emerges as breeding ground for SIMI operatives
BHOPAL: Imprints of keys on prison toilet soaps, scribbles in the prison register that say “We are coming on Deepawali” and recovery of 17 duplicate cell keys are among the leads explored by officers probing a jailbreak by eight SIMI men, sources privy to investigations said.
The new revelations indicate that the undertrials had meticulously planned their escape for months and aimed to free all 29 Islamist radicals lodged in the jail, police sources claimed.
The eight men who first escaped from Block B planned to proceed to the adjacent Block A to free other Students Islamic Movement of India operatives – including self-styled MP SIMI chief Abu Faisal -- but their plans were foiled by two jail guards, sources added.
Jail sources say the plan may have been hatched when inmates of BlockAandBwerejointlyunder treatment at the prison hospital. Soaps were also recovered that may have been used as casts to duplicate jail cell keys, sources added.
A sweep of nine cells of B block that housed the other SIMI men who failed to escape have led to at least two registers that mention in Hindi and English “Hum Deepawali par aa rahe hain” and “We’re coming on Deepawali” along with other notes written in Urdu.
The jailbreak and subsequent encounter of the eight men has made national headlines. Two prison guards, head warder Ramshankar Yadav and warder Chandan Singh, spotted the eight SIMI men coming out of their cells and a fight broke out, in which Yadav was killed.
Further, small pieces of paper containing sketches resembling maps of a hillock and some explanation in Urdu too have been recovered from a cell in B block.
These drawings resemble a cave near a hillock and police think the men planned to hide there for a few days. The investigators also found dried meat and prawns from their cells which suggest the SIMI men planned to consume them after the escape, added sources.
But the SIMI men’s lawyer rubbished the police’s version, saying the men never escaped and were taken out of the jail and shot. BHOPAL: The escape and the killing of eight suspected members of the banned SIMI in an alleged gunfight with police have put the spotlight back on Khandwa, a small town about 280km from the state capital Bhopal.
Five of those killed on Monday were from Khandwa, the alleged hotspot of Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) in Madhya Pradesh.
Sources in intelligence agencies point to Safdar Nagori, the chief of SIMI’s radical wing, for Khandwa emerging as the centre of the group’s activities in Madhya Pradesh.
Nagori, who is lodged in Gujarat’s Sabarmati jail, hails from Mahidpur in Ujjain, which is part of the Malwa-Nimad region that includes Khandwa. Nagori, said sources, managed to influence many local youth.
“SIMI flourished in MP during Digvijaya Singh’s regime,” Deepak Vijayvargiya, chief spokesperson of the BJP’s state unit said.
Three of the eight men— Mehboob Guddu, Zakir Hussain and Amjad Khan— killed on Monday were among the seven SIMI men who escaped from the Khandwa jail in October 2013.
The encounter and questions swirling around it also tie closely with SIMI’s history in MP.
A look at police records reveal that 83 FIRs are registered against SIMI in MP. Most of these were filed in 2001, the year the organisation was banned . But, the only instance of violence involving the proscribed group in the state was reported from Khandwa when in 2008, constable Sitaram Yadav, was killed by Abu Faisal, one of the prominent SIMI leaders.
Faisal, who is connected to Khandwa through marriage, is serving a life term in the Bhopal jail from where the eight undertrials fled. Faisal’s compatriot, Abdul Khilji, too, was killed on Monday. He was held in 2006 for allegedly fanning discord between Hindus and Muslims in Khandwa.