Safdar Nagori

Safdar Nagori is the current leader of the outlawed Islamist terrorist group, the Students Islamic Movement of India.

Nagori, now in his late 30s, was born in a prominent and respected Pathan Sunni Muslim family in Ujjain in Madhya Pradesh which had a history of service in the Police Force and Paramilitary Forces. His father was a gazetted Police officer in the Madhya Pradesh Police who retired as a senior Inspector in 1987.

He joined SIMI in 1991. In 2001, when several SIMI leaders urged the organisation to renounce terror and return to academic and religious activities, he became the leader of the faction that preferred an armed struggle.

It is believed that somewhere between 2001 and 2002, he came to Delhi. In 2003, he moved to Mumbai. He spent the next five years in Murshidabad in West Bengal, where no major Islamist terrorist attacks have taken place (except the USIS attack in 2002).