A militant from the Islamic Student Movement of India who has been on the run for the past 19 years has been arrested, the Delhi Police said in a statement. The 58-year-old perpetrator, Abdullah Danish, was one of the most fugitive members” of the SIMI terrorist group and was wanted for sedition in Delhi.
“Abdullah Danish was one of the senior-most members of SIMI who indoctrinated many young Muslims in the last 25 years,” the police said in the statement. “He was chief editor of the Hindi version of SIMI magazine ‘Islamic Movement’ for four years,” the police said.
Abdullah Danish is a resident of Mau in Uttar Pradesh and has a house in UP’s Aligarh, the police said. The court had declared him the most wanted court in 2002, and the police had been hunting for him since then.
Senior police officer Attar Singh of the Special Cell has been monitoring the Danish Abdullah movement in the National Capital Area and UP for the last year, the police said. The SIMI terrorist has worked to “radicalise Muslim youth to mobilise against the NRC to the CAA and propagate radic.
Abdullah Danish allegedly circulated fake videos to show the government committing atrocities against Muslims, the police said. “After painstaking efforts of more than a year, specific information about Abdullah Danish was received on December 5. Based on this, a raiding party was formed and trap was laid near Zakir Nagar, Delhi where Abdullah Danish was arrested,” the police said in the statement.
The SIMI was set up in 1977 in Aligarh. It was banned by the government in 2001 for terror activities.
According to the police, Abdullah Danish did MA in Arabic studies at Aligarh Muslim University in 1985. “After getting into contact with SIMI revolutionaries, he became strongly radicalised. After joining SIMI, Abdullah Danish began attending weekly SIMI programmes… Ashraf Jafri, then president of SIMI, made Abdullah Danish editor of the Hindi version of SIMI magazine in 1988… wrote several inflammatory articles falsely highlighting the atrocities against Muslims in India,” the police said.
During a raid at a SIMI hideout in south Delhi’s Zakir Nagar in 2001, Abdullah Danish managed to escape and went underground, the police said. “He kept changing his locations to evade arrest… Through Abdullah Danish, terrorist Abdus Subhan Qureshi was introduced to another terrorist Abu Bashar… Both planned and executed a series of blasts with the help of their other associates in Ahmedabad in 2008. Abu Bashar had visited and stayed in house of Abdullah Danish in Aligarh after the Ahmedabad blasts,” the police said in the statement.