New Delhi: Eight fugitive Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) terror suspects, who escaped from the high security Bhopal Central Jail, were gunned down in the outskirts of Bhopal, police said on Monday.
They were allegedly involved in attacks in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh.
SIMI is a banned outfit in the country for their alleged involvement in several terror activities.
Here are 10 things to know about the banned organisation.
- Students Islamic Movement of India or SIMI, which is now operating underground, is an organisation proscribed under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967.
- The organisation was founded on April 25, 1977 in Uttar Pradesh's Aligarh, as a student wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind (JIH). It is an islamic fundamentalist organisation which advocates the ‘liberation of India’ by converting it to an Islamic land.
- The group was the brain child of Mohammad Ahmadullah Siddiqi, a media studies professor at the Western Illinois University, Macomb, the United States. Siddiqui was the group’s founding president.
- SIMI has a national presence with strong bases in the States of Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Kerala, Maharashtra (Aurangabad, Malegaon, Jalgaon and Thane), Andhra Pradesh and Assam.
- To establish Dar-ul-Islam (land of Islam) by either forcefully converting everyone to Islam or by violence, SIMI has declared Jihad against India.
- SIMI was outlawed in 2001 under the Prevention of Terrorism Act for alleged “anti-national” activities. Thought the act was been scrapped by the former UPA government.
- Safdar Nagori, the secretary general of SIMI, is the present head of the organisation. When SIMI was outlawed under POTA in 2001, the Delhi Police arrested Nagori from the SIMI office in the Zakir Nagar area of Delhi. Since then, he has been in jail, charged with sedition and inciting communal trouble in Uttar Pradesh.
- The People’s Union for Democratic Rights, a leading civil liberties organisation, has challenged the ban on SIMI, which has been extended till 2019.
- The extension was formally made after the last tribunal to hear cases under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act concluded in July, 2014 under Justice Suresh Kait of the Delhi High Court.
- SIMI allegedly conducted explosions on commuter trains in Mumbai in 2006 that killed 187 people. The group also is being investigated for a string of bombings in Gujarat which killed 45 people in 2008.
- The same year, in September, more than 20 people were killed in blasts in New Delhi that were also blamed on the proscribed group.
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