Five terrorists of the outlawed Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) were convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment on the charge of possessing explosives by a special National Investigation Agency court in Bhopal yesterday (Thursday, 28 February 2019), reports The Hindu.

The Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) of the Madhya Pradesh Police had nabbed three SIMI operatives in a raid in the Mahidpur area of Ujjain district; a large stash of explosives and related items were recovered from them, including eight hundred gelatin sticks, a pipe bomb, 540 detonators and 11 other kinds of bombs.

Nine other persons were taken into custody afterwards. Of the total 12 accused individuals in the case, two of them , namely Khalid Ahmed and Abdul Mazid, were shot dead in a 2016 police encounter.

Five others have been acquitted by the special court. The five who have been convicted are Abdul Aziz, Javed, Abdul Wahid, Jubar and Mohammad Adil, who have not only been punished with life imprisonment, but will also be made to pay a fine Rs 8,000 each.

SIMI maintains that several foundational concepts of Indian polity imbibed in Constitution like secularism, democracy and nationalism are against Islam. The organisation not only aims to counter the ‘decadence’ spread by the western civilisation but also reinstate Khilafat, the Islamic rule. It emphasises Muslim Ummah and waging of ‘Jihad’.