South Africa has agreed to investigate an Indian citizen, an aide of the most wanted terrorist Dawood Ibrahim, in the murders of a VHP activist and a BJP leader in Gujarat two years ago.
Ibrahim is wanted by India for a series of terror acts, including the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts that killed more than 250 people.
Zahidmiya Saikh, alias Jao, is wanted by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) for allegedly conspiring to kill Vishwa Hindu Parishad activist Shirish Bengali and BJP leader Pragnesh Mistry at Bharuch, Gujarat, in November 2015. The NIA’s probe revealed that Saikh, based in South Africa, had hired killers in Gujarat on the directions of Javed Dawoodbhai Patel, alias Javed Chikna, a key member of the Dawood gang based in Pakistan.
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Request made last year
Under the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty, the NIA requested the South Africa authorities last year to “provisionally arrest” Saikh living in Port Elizabeth.
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After much back and forth, South African officials replied to the NIA a few days ago that since the allegations were serious, they would like to conduct an independent investigation. “It’s a positive development that South Africa has agreed to open an investigation, based on our request. We will wait for the outcome. Earlier, they had asked why a murder was being investigated as a terror case. When we shared the details of the links to Pakistan, they agreed to act,” a senior NIA official said.
Larger conspiracy
In its charge sheet filed in 2016, the NIA said the murders were part of a “larger conspiracy by Saikh to target Hindu leaders allegedly involved in the 2002 Gujarat riots and who were perceived to be anti-Muslim. Saikh contacted young people in India and offered them a handsome money to work for the ‘D’ company and lured them with foreign jobs.”
It said: “Shirish Bengali’s murder was part of a larger conspiracy to target people from the RSS, the VHP, the Bajrang Dal and the BJP. Twenty-six foreign conspirators, based in South Africa and Pakistan, formed a terrorist gang and hatched a conspiracy through voice call, SMS and WhatsApp calls and messages to kill persons belonging to a particular section of society with the intention of terrorising them and creating communal unrest.”
The NIA said Javed Chikna, now settled in Karachi, had sent the names of the persons to be targeted to Saikh in October 2015, a month before the murders.
The case was earlier investigated by the Gujarat Police and then transferred to the NIA.
Twelve persons were arrested for the murders: Saiyed Mohammad Kadri, Zuheb Ansari, Inayat Patel, Mohammad Yunus, Haider Ali, Nissarbhai Sheikh, Moshin Khan, Mohammad Altaf, Abid Patel, Abdul Salim, Abdul Samad and Nasir Khan Pathan.