According to Indian officials, suspects and leads in the ongoing investigation into the July 11 serial bombings of commuter trains in Mumbai are pointing to the complicity of the Pakistani -based Kashmiri militant group, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) , a banned homegrown Islamic organization called the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) , and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency. That an LeT-SIMI collaboration remains the primary hypothesis for the groups responsible continues to underscore the potential threat to India posed by homegrown Muslims radicalized to militancy.
India has arrested 11 suspects in connection with the bombings, and Chief of the Mumbai Police Antiterrorist Squad, K. P. Raghuvanshi, has said that at least six of the suspects have admitted that they traveled to Pakistan for militant training. However, Indian police have also said that they suspect that the bombing cell has fled the country.
One of those arrested, Faisal Shaikh, is considered to be the leader of a Lashkar cell in Mumbai and, according to police, had arranged for other operatives to travel to Pakistan for militant training. Abdul Hameed, a Kashmiri arrested last week, is thought to have been sent by LeT to Mumbai to set up an action cell, according to an unnamed intelligence source quoted by Agence France-Presse. Two other individuals arrested are suspected of having connections to SIMI.
The reported strengthening of ISI support to Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan and the agency’s alleged connections to the Mumbai bombings, suggests that ISI may be stepping up support for Kashmiri groups and attacks against India. Alternatively, TRC speculates that the scope and lethality of the Mumbai bombings may be an indication of a more audacious LeT, flexing against ISI control.
Since the bombings, some representatives of India’s Muslim community have claimed that police roundups and suspicion have unduly targeted Muslims. As the July 26 WAR Report discussed, a perceived heavy-handed or prejudiced targeting of India’s Muslims by government forces and/or vigilantism may stoke simmering societal tensions and feelings of social injustice and inequality by Indian Muslims, driving some Muslims to radicalized militancy against the state. The potential for this dynamic of inter-communal strife and militant radicalization grows significantly should the official findings of the investigation identify a homegrown Muslim element as complicit. At present, the threat of homegrown Muslim militancy directed against Hindus and the state is moderate. However, the motivational societal dynamics and grievances for militancy among Indian Muslims are present and could be galvanized with perceptions of persecution at the hands of Indian agencies or society and/or could be exploited by Kashmiri militant or jihadist groups to rally homegrown operatives to conduct anti-Indian terrorist attacks.
