SIMI Leader Safdar Nagori And 11 Others Sentenced To Life

Student Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) leader Safdar Nagori has been sentenced to life for possessing explosives and ammunition and plotting terror activities.

A CBI Court in Indore on Monday handed down the sentence to 11 SIMI operatives besides Nagori, who was the leader of the militant wing of the banned Islamic outfit. Nagori, along with his brother Kamruddin and several other key operatives of Simi — prominent among them the mastermind of the 2006 Mumbai train serial blasts Shibly Peedicaal Abdul — were arrested by the Special Task Force of the Madhya Pradesh Police in March 2008. The police later exposed a training camp in Madhya Pradesh's Choral, where it found 122 super-explosive gelatine sticks, 100 detonators and switchboards buried underground.

After Nagori was arrested he revealed during confession about SIMI’s rise as a militant outfit. The outfit had about 400 active members and 20,000 ordinary supporters. His fighters received training in Jammu and Kashmir alongside the Hizbul Mujaheedin, Nagori said, adding, they were trained in executing different kinds of terror operations across the country. Nagori had also pressed for inclusion of more women into the ranks of the outfit.

Nagori, who was arrested in 2008, had been a member of Simi since 1993, and remained underground after 2001. A merit-holder, who completed his masters in journalism from Vikram University, was not a radical during his student days.