Why SIMI terrorist Tauqeer is such a prize catch

NEW DELHI: For a computer engineer, who had Microsoft certifications in his resume, taking to jihad was an unusual choice for Abdul Subhan Qureshi aka Tauqeer. In the mid-1990s, his employer, a multinational firm, received a mail from him that said, rather starkly, “I have decided to devote myself to religious and spiritual matters for the next one year.”

That mail marked the birth of a jihadi who Delhi Police special commissioner MM Oberoi described as “a phantom in SIMI and Indian Mujahideen”. “Tauqeer played an important part in numerous terror events but every time the police or other security agencies thought they were closing in on him, he would vanish into thin air,” Oberoi said.

Of the 23 bombs planted by Tauqeer and aides in Ahmedabad, two were cruelly sited at hospitals to cause and ensure maximum casualties with victims being rushed to these hospitals. In these and other acts, the computer engineer applied his education and expertise to the fullest: he used his diploma in electronics to fabricate bombs and IEDs and his proficiency in English to fuel hatred as editor of SIMI’s magazine, The Islamic Movement.


One wouldn’t have though perhaps that this student of a missionary school in Mumbai and later of Bharatiya Vidyapeeth, where he got a diploma in industrial electronics, would take to “Iraq-style warfare”. “His life belies the theory that terrorists come from uneducated and deprived backgrounds,” pointed out Pramod Kushwaha, DCP (Special Cell).

Tauqeer was of always of religious bent of mind. “In his teenage years, he started visiting the Muslim Charitable Library near his house, where he read about and took a keen interest in issues related to Islam. He also started taking part in social gatherings on religious issues,” revealed Kushwaha.

The youngster’s life changed when he met Riyaz Bhatkal, then studying in Byculla College. With Bhatkal, he later went on to found IM. But even before that, his first brush with the law came when he was booked under the Public Property Defacement Act for putting up provocative posters against the demolition of the Babri Masjid on the walls of government installations in Mumbai in the company of associates named Tariq Ismail and Salim Sheikh.

His journey as a jihadi became inevitable in1996 after his appointment as an ansar in SIMI. He got married in February 1999 and by the following year had transformed into a highly radicalised youth, totally disillusioned with the establishment and determined to follow the jihadist ideology. By then, he had also become a prominent member of SIMI with the Shura of the fundamentalist group assigning to him the task of editing the English edition of its magazine.

Tauqeer left his well-paid job in Mumbai and moved to Zakir Nagar in Delhi. During his stay in the capital, he grew very close to Safdar Nagori, the then general secretary of the Central Advisory Committee of SIMI. When SIMI was banned in September 2001 and some of the operatives were arrested in Surat, the investigation included the Mumbai youth’s name. Tauqeer quickly shifted base to Bijapur in Karnataka, and soon after Nagori appointed him the head ansar of the operations in that state.

While living in Bijapur, Tauqeer frequently travelled to Bhatkal and revived his association with Riyaz Bhatkal and his brother Iqbal. Tauqeer, who was by now second-in-command of SIMI, became a co-founder of Indian Mujahideen along with the Bhatkal brothers in 2000.

He worked as the main bridge between the old cadre of SIMI and the newly founded IM. By 2005, after reviving SIMI in south India and consolidating ties with IM, he diverted his energies to action in Maharashtra and Gujarat. In March 2008, he was asked to head SIMI after the arrest of Nagori by the Madhya Pradesh Special Task Force. During all this time, he continued to recruit people to his movement. As an officer admitted, “He created cadres wherever he went.”