Safdar Nagori

Safdar Nagori (born 1969) was the General-Secretary of the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), an Islamist organization designated as a terrorist organization by the Government of India.

Nagori was born in Mahedpur village in the Ujjain district of Madhya Pradesh in 1969.

According to Indian newspaper Daily News and Analysis, Nagori became radicalized after the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992, and subsequent communal riots.

He joined SIMI in 1993.

His father, Gahiruddhin, disowned his son after learning of his activities.

The first FIR against Nagori was filed in Indore in 1998.

He was subsequently arrested and then released, after which he went into hiding.

Safdar Nagori graduated with a Masters in Journalism from Vikram University, Ujjain in 1999 and was a merit holder.

While at the university, he became state president of SIMI.

His brother Kamruddin Nagori, was the chief of the SIMI's operations in Andhra Pradesh.

In autumn of the 2000, Harun Rashid, Mohammad Sabahuddin and other SIMI cadre drawn by Nagori's network had begun training with the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen in Jammu and Kashmir.

Graduates of the training went on to participate in several major terrorist operations.

In an interview with Sayantan Chakravarty in April 2001, five months before SIMI was banned by the government, he expressed his views.

"Let me explain the concept of Jihad as detailed in the Quran. It is not when an individual is harmed but when an entire community finds itself collectively persecuted that the cry for Jihad is given. ... Warn. If nothing works then one is forced to revolt, take to arms.

...When we are told that there is a rashtrapita [Father of the Nation] in Gandhi, and another great statesman in Jawaharlal Nehru, we feel it is a direct attack on our fundamentals.

Nehru wanted Muslims to recognise Ghulam Ahmed Qadiani as our Prophet.

He was forcing us to alter our religious belief and we have no regard for such a man.

(In response to the question 'you have openly eulogised Osama bin Laden') Not once, but dozens of times.

We believe that he has shown great character in standing up to the Americans, the biggest terrorists in the world.

(In response to the question 'At SIMI meetings speeches of Qazi Hussain Ahmad, the Jamaat-e-Islami chief in Pakistan, are played. Why?') We link up with him in Pakistan through phones and the speeches are amplified for the audience.

The Qazi wants us to take Islam to non-Muslims."

When SIMI was banned in September 2001, Safdar Nagori told BBC that allegations that the organization had links with Islamic militant separatist groups were baseless.

In July 2001, police in Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and New Delhi arrested 23 SIMI-linked terrorists.

Four of those held turned out to have trained in Kishtwar.

SIMI cadre have aided militant groups such as the Taliban, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad and the Harkat ul-Jihad-e-Islami in carrying out terrorist activities.

In 2001, Nagori fell out with SIMI leadership.

While several SIMI leaders urged the group to abandon terrorism and focus on academic and religious activities, Nagori advocated continuing terrorist activities.

Nagori absconded shortly after SIMI was proscribed as terrorist organization by the Government of India on 27 September 2001.

He spent a year in Delhi in 2001–02, before moving to Mumbai in 2003.

Nagori then moved to Murshidabad, West Bengal where he would spend the next five years.

In Murshidabad, Indian law enforcement officials believe that Nagori was training 200 people for Mullah Omar, the spiritual leader of the Taliban.

Officials also state that his activities in at least five states, suggests that he must have created large local terrorist networks, some of which have been uncovered by the arrests of connected militants.

His father Gahiruddhin Nagori worked in the Ujjain Police Crime Branch, and retired at the rank of Assistant Sub Inspector in 2005.

Nagori visited Hyderabad in early 2008.

Safdar Nagori was arrested by Madhya Pradesh Police from a flat in Sanyogitaganj, Indore on 26 March 2008.

Ten other SIMI militants, including his brother Kamruddin Nagori, were also arrested in the operation.

Following a week of interrogation of the accused, they revealed the location of a farmhouse in Choral, 35 km from Indore, which was used as a training camp by SIMI militants.

The police were told the camp trained SIMI members from Jharkhand, Kerala, Karnataka and some other states in physical exercise, combat and organisation philosophy.

Police found arms, ammunition, radical literature in Urdu and Hindi and explosives at the farmhouse and arrested two more militants.

On 27 February 2017, a court in Indore sentenced Nagori to life imprisonment for possession of illegal arms, ammunition and explosives, and plotting terrorist activities.