Minister raises ‘ doubt’ on IM existence

By Mail Today Bureau in New Delhi

AT A time when a Delhi court has convicted Indian Mujahideen member Shahzad Ahmad in the 2008 Batla House shootout case, Union Minority Affairs Minister K. Rahman Khan says the general perception among Muslims was that the terror outfit does not exist. “ There is a perception among Muslims that IM does not exist. Nobody knows what it is, who runs it, where it was formed and how it was formed. That is what the Muslims feel and they come and tell me,” he told reporters at his Bangalore residence. Following a series of terror attacks in which the group’s involvement was established by various intelligence and investigating agencies between 2008 and 2010, the union government had banned the terrorist outfit. The outfit has also been recognised as a terror group in countries such as the US and New Zealand. Following these attacks, e- mails were sent to media houses claiming that Indian Mujahideen was responsible for them. On Thursday, a trial court in Delhi had held that the encounter which had taken place at flat no L- 18, Batla House in Delhi's Jamia Nagar on September 19, 2008, was not a sudden confrontation and that the police team wasn’t expecting a gunfight. The encounter has led to a series of arrests of IM suspects and the outfit's existence was also acknowledged by P. Chidambaram, the then Union home minister. After the court verdict, Chidambaram said he was happy that the Delhi Police were able to prove that the encounter was genuine.