After several months of persistent efforts to get Islamist leader Abdul Nasser Madani, whom many see as Kerala's fountainhead of jihadi terror, the Karnataka Police has come closer to its goal with the Metropolitan Magistrate's Court in Bangalore issuing a non-bailable warrant for his arrest in the 2008 bombing case. The charge against Madani, whose political party PDP was an ally of the CPI(M) for more than four years and a supporter of the Congress-led UDF before that, is of inciting anti-national activities carried out by LeT's south India boss Thadiyantavide Nazeer and his henchmen. There are those who believe that the court had ordered his release from prison in 2007 in the Coimbatore serial bombings case as authorities had botched up the case against him and due to the unanimous support he received from the Kerala Assembly. Nazeer, the mastermind behind the terror bombing of Bangalore and other places, has confessed that he had discussed the plot with Madani, the 31st accused in the case, over phone and in person repeatedly though he and his party have been consistent in their denial. Police had even discovered that Madani's connections with the terrorists' gang was so close that his wife Sufiya, a key accused in another terror case in Kerala, was the local guardian in Kochi of the daughter of Abdul Sattar, LeT's explosives expert and one of the perpetrators of the Bangalore bombings.
Reconciled to the fact that there is no other alternative at this stage, the Kerala Government, led by the CPI(M), has announced that it will extend the requisite assistance to Karnataka Police to arrest Madani. It will now have to do the needful to enable the police to produce him before the Bangalore court on or before June 23. Eager not to be seen as backing an Islamist whose support it has received for several years, the Indian Union Muslim League, an ally of the Congress, has accused the CPI(M) of protecting Madani. As the wanted man's lawyers continued their efforts in Bangalore to secure anticipatory bail for him, PDP leaders are busy issuing threatening statements while party workers are trying to create communal trouble at Anvarssery in Kerala's Kollam district, his operational headquarters. Madani's deputy in the party and close relative Poonthura Siraj said the repercussions of his impending arrest are unpredictable, thus indicating clearly the course of action the PDP is planning to adopt. However, the Karnataka Police, unlike its Kerala counterpart which takes orders from its Marxist masters, seems to be determined to take the case against Madani, who is viewed by many as the architect of jihadi campaigns in Kerala and other southern States, to its logical conclusion.
