The previously unknown group that claimed responsibility for Wednesday’s attacks across Mumbai has added to the growing belief that India is confronting home-grown Islamic militancy.
The vast majority of previous attacks on Indian soil have been blamed on groups based in or directly supported by neighboring Pakistan.
But attacks over the last year have been claimed by groups with names stressing their local origins.
“Deccan Mujahedeen,” which said it was responsible for the Mumbai assault, takes its title from the Deccan Plateau that covers much of south India.
The outfit sent e-mails to local media saying it carried out the attacks.
A similarly shadowy group calling itself the “Indian Mujahedeen” claimed responsibility for serial blasts in Delhi in September, which killed 20 people, and bombings in the western city of Ahmedabad in July when 45 died.
Another group, the “Islamic Security Force-Indian Mujahedeen,” said it was behind explosions last month in India’s northeast state of Assam that killed 80.
One of the gunmen involved in Mumbai’s multiple attacks told a television news channel that the “Deccan Mujahedeen” was fighting to end persecution of Indian Muslims.
The gunman, holed up in the Oberoi hotel, called for the release of fellow Islamic militants detained in India.
“We love this as our country but when our mothers and sisters were being killed, where was everybody?” he told India TV by telephone.
It is unclear whether the various groups are connected, but retired senior security official B. Raman has said their chosen names were a “bid to Indianize” the Islamic militant movement.
The “Indian Mujahedeen,” which also calls itself “the militia of Islam,” first came to public attention last November following serial blasts in Uttar Pradesh.
The same group sent another e-mail to the media after blasts in May in the city of Jaipur in which it said it would wage an “open war” against India for supporting the US, and warned of more attacks against tourist sites.
Security services suspect the groups may be fronts for outfits that have been banned by the Indian government over the past few years such as the Students’ Islamic Movement of India.
Others say they could be an undercover coalition of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed militant organizations.
Just minutes before the blasts in Ahmedabad, the main commercial city of Gujarat state, the “Indian Mujahedeen” sent e-mails to several TV news stations warning that people would “feel the terror of death.”
It said the Ahmedabad blasts were revenge for riots that swept Gujarat in 2002 in which at least 2,000 people, mainly Muslims, were hacked, shot and burnt to death.
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