Bhatkal: Rise of radicalised youth
Born in Bhatkal, the coastal town of Karnataka in 1983, top arrested Indian Mujahideen commander Yasin Bhatkal, used to visit Anjuman Engineering College in Bhatkal in 2003 where he tried to motivate several youth to join jihad. Though, it is not clear whether he completed his education, Yasin is one of the several cases where young educated youths became radicalised and took up terror activities. At the age of 21, Yasin had emerged as one of the close confidante of ganglord-turned-terrorist and founder of IM Amir Reza Khan.
Yasin was tasked to ensure that bombs and other anti-national material were transported from a beach house in Karnataka’s coastal district of Bhatkal to other parts of the country in 2004. When the oufit, which initially drew its identity from members of the banned Simi, was transformed into the Indian Mujahideen, Yasin was mentored by his brothers and co-founders of IM Iqbal and Riyaz Bhatkal. Yasin was introduced to other members of the IM as a trained engineer and grew as an explosives expert.
After the 2008 crackdown by security agencies on the IM which led to the Batla House encounter, he was tasked with operational responsibilities of the IM when Riyaz and Iqbal Bhatkal fled to Karachi. It was sooner than later that Yasin became the top commander of the IM establishing sleeper cells in Delhi, Bihar and Tambaram in Tamil Nadu, recruiting fresh IM faces from Dharb-hanga in Bihar and Delhi and coordinating nearly all the terrorist attacks in the country but evading arrests every time.
Yasin first surfaced on the radar of investigators in 2008 by the name of Shahrukh when he supplied IEDs for the Sept 13, 2008, serial blasts in Delhi. He was also arrested in Kolkata in 2009 on the charges of theft but he managed to go free by concealing his identity. He once again managed to give a slip to Delhi police in 2011 in Tamil Nadu.
Investigators say Yasin was finally caught on camera planting the IED at German Bakery in Pune in February 2010 and became the prime suspect in the case. Yasin is learnt to have established a bomb factory in Mir Vihar area of Delhi where he married a local girl to stay below the radar of security agencies. He continued to unleash terror in various parts of the country and remained the prime suspect in several terror cases, including the Chinnaswami Stadium blasts in Bangalore on April 17, 2010, Mumbai serial blasts of July, 2011, Dilsukhnagar blasts of February, 2013 and the Bodh Gaya serial blasts.
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