Twice-convicted, Saquib Nachan back into limelight

Mumbai: Convicted twice for various terror activities, shady links and unholy anti-national plots, Thane’s most infamous baddie, Saquib A. Nachan has again shot to attention, for mostly similar reasons.

A permanent fixture on the radars of the Maharashtra Police and state and central intelligence and security agencies, this time the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) swooped on Nachan and his associates in the twin villages of Borivali-Padgha in Thane. 

Nabbed multiple times by different agencies, Nachan, 66, is currently cooling heels in a New Delhi jail in a two-year-old case related to the global terror group ISIS and his purported links with it.

Sources in Bhiwandi said that from his collegian days in the 1980s, Nachan – using several aliases - displayed rebellious tendencies and joined the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), now banned.

Over the years, he grew in SIMI, came in contact with Chenaparambil Abdulkader Muhammed Basheer, alias CAM Basheer, an extreme radical hailing from Kerala.

Nachan went ahead to forge ties with some Khalistani terror outfits, Pakistan’s ISI and lately with the much-dreaded ISIS, of which he was a self-appointed Maharashtra head.

The ATS raids on June 2 (yesterday, Monday) were prompted after the agencies tightened their vigil on potential mischief-mongers following the April 22 Pahalgam terror strikes on tourists.

Post-raids on Monday, the ATS said that Nachan had delivered fiery and provocative speeches to sway the local populace towards planning anti-national actions/attacks.

On getting reliable intel of such possibilities, the ATS moved a local Magistrate for search warrants and raided more than 20 locations yesterday, besides detaining a dozen suspects for planning violent disturbances.

For Nachan, there was a sudden break in 1992 when he and a Khalistani extremist Lal Singh – entrusted with implementing Operation K2 (Kashmir-Khalistan) – were nabbed and convicted. Nachan spent 10 years in jail.

After completing his sentence in 2001, he was again suspected and arrested for the three bomb blasts that rocked Mumbai between Dec. 2002-March 2003 at Mumbai Central’s McDonalds outlet (Dec. 6, 2002), the Vile Parle station market (Jan. 17, 2003) and in a local train compartment in Mulund (March 30, 2003) - totally claiming 13 lives and injuring more than 130 people.

The Mumbai Police had clubbed the three terror strikes and in its combined chargesheet, had accused Nachan and others of criminal conspiracy to wage a war against India. He was convicted and sentenced to jail for 10 years, after which he was set free in 2017.

Earlier, he was also arrested as the prime suspect in the murder of a Bajrang Dal activist Lalit Jain in Bhiwandi, but was acquitted in 2006 for lack of sufficient evidence.

Nachan was nabbed again in Aug. 2012 for a murder attempt on a Vishwa Hindu Parishad functionary Manoj Raicha, and was subsequently enlarged on bail in Aug. 2014.

In 2023, when the country was limping back from the Covid-19 Pandemic lockdowns, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) knocked on Nachan’s door and picked him up for the ISIS-related case.

Among other things, he had proclaimed the Padgha village as ‘Al Sham’ (liberated), and administered the ‘Bayath’ (oath of allegiance) to the Khalifa of ISIS to new recruits, etc.

Kindred souls – Nachans, Bhatkals, Memons and Kaskars

A B.Com. graduate with a sharp legal acumen that dazes even top lawyers, Saquib A. Nachan admitted in the past that he visited Dubai, Afghanistan, Pakistan and more countries, ostensibly to build ties with extremist outfits based/functioning from there and casting an evil eye on India.

Once in the 1980s, he joined the Afghanistan Mujahideen groups to wage war against the Soviet Union, which brought him in contact with more merchants of terror.

Given his inglorious track record, Nachan and his kin, along with the Karnataka-based Bhatkal kin, Yasin and Riyaz who founded the much-feared Indian Mujahideen (IM) in 2007, remain among the 'most-watched persons' in the country.

The Nachans (Thane), the Bhatkals (Karnataka) and earlier the Memon clan, as also the absconder Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar families (both from Mumbai), are rank as the most notorious domestic terror pot-stirrers, though many still await their date with the law.