Indian Mujahideen

Indian Mujahideen (IM) is a terrorist group based In India, as alleged by certain groups, known for carrying out several attacks against civilian targets in India.

Believed by some to be a front for the Pakistan based Lashkar-e-Taiba to create tension between India's Muslim and Hindu communities and by others to be a "shadow amalgam of the Students Islamic Movement of India", the Indian Mujahideen on 4 June 2010 was declared a terrorist organisation and banned by the Government of India. On 22 October 2010, New Zealand declared it a terrorist organisation. In September 2011, the United States officially placed the Indian Mujahideen on its list of terrorist organisations, with the State Department acknowledging that the group had engaged in several terrorist attacks in India and had regional aspirations with the ultimate aim of creating an "Islamic caliphate" across South Asia. The terror group was banned by UK as it aimed at creating Islamic State and implementing Shariat law in India, by use of indiscriminate violence.

A number of botched arrests and custodial deaths have continued to raise questions in the mainstream media and even consipiracy theories particularly among India's beseiged muslim community that the so-called Indian Mujahideen is a counterfeit organisation set up by vested interests with the intent to tarnish the Indian muslim community with the Al-qaeda tag that was until then never used in reference to Indian Muslims, as confirmed by then US President George W. Bush during his official visit to India.

Investigators believe that Indian Mujahideen is one of many groups composed of lower-tier SIMI members. According to the Indian Intelligence Bureau, SIMI took new titles because the top leadership of SIMI have been detained and would be available for interrogation. The change in names is believed to signal a change in tactics as SIMI affiliated militants attempt to garner more support from India's Muslim community rather than be seen as a group consisting of foreigners. Two days after the 13 May 2008 Jaipur bombings, the extremist group sent an e-mail to Indian media in which they claimed responsibility for the attacks and said they would "demolish the faiths (all religions apart from Islam) of the infidels of India". The biggest and boldest attack to date by the group was the 2008 Ahmedabad serial blasts, where it gained national notoriety with a casualty count towards 50.