Intelligence and anti-terrorism agencies have unearthed a secret SIMI module operating from Pune and have picked up some of its important members for questioning.
"We have detected the Pune module and further details would be known by early next week," said Hemant Karkare, chief of the state Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) on Sunday evening.
"With the arrest of some key SIMI activists during the last two days, several new facts about the working and future plans of the banned outfit have come to light. We are working on all the leads and intelligence inputs to take our investigations to a logical end," Karkare said.
In a related development, Karkare said the investigations so far have revealed the criminal-terror nexus to a certain extent.
"We have two persons in custody who have a prior criminal record and were found to be involved in SIMI activities," he disclosed. "We are probing the angle," he said.
"We already know about the Jaipur, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Kerala, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh modules and now the Pune module has come under our scanner. The remaining modules too would be identified soon," Karkare told DNA on Sunday.
Simi IT expert identified : Agencies probing the recent Gujarat blasts case have been able to identify the IT expert and said to be one of the brains behind the terror plot.
Sources revealed that they were looking for one Abdul Subhan Qureshi, who is known as Tauqeer in Simi circles.
"This is the man who drafted and later sent the email warning about the blasts to Mufti Abu Bashir for whetting. How the e-mails were later put on the Internet was still being investigated," sources said.
Tauqeer is believed to be a member of the high level core group that plans and executes the Simi terror machine, it was further learnt.
"Tauqeer is an ace IT expert. He knows the use and misuse of computers and internet networks. He is one of the most wanted men as of now," the sources added.
