Of the 23 bombs planted by Tauqeer and aides in Ahmadabad, two were cruelly sited at hospitals to cause and ensure maximum casualties with victims being rushed to these hospitals

NEW DELHI: For a computer engineer, who had Microsoft certifications in his resume, taking to jihad was an unusual choice for Abdul Subhan Qureshi aka Tauqeer. In the mid-1990s, his employer, a multinational firm, received a mail from him that said, rather starkly, "I have decided to devote myself to religious and spiritual matters for the next one year."

That mail marked the birth of a Jihadi who Delhi Police special commissioner MM Oberoi described as "a phantom in SIMI and Indian Mujahideen". "Tauqeer played an important part in numerous terror events but every time the police or other security agencies thought they were closing in on him, he would vanish into thin air," Oberoi said.


Of the 23 bombs planted by Tauqeer and aides in Ahmedabad, two were cruelly sited at hospitals to cause and ensure maximum casualties with victims being rushed to these hospitals. In these and other acts, the computer engineer applied his education and expertise to the fullest: he used his diploma in electronics to fabricate bombs and IEDs and his proficiency in English to fuel hatred as editor of SIMI's magazine, The Islamic Movement.

One wouldn't have though perhaps that this student of a missionary school in Mumbai and later of Bharatiya Vidyapeeth, where he got a diploma in industrial electronics, would take to "Iraq-style warfare". "His life belies the theory that terrorists come from uneducated and deprived backgrounds," pointed out Pramod Kushwaha, DCP (Special Cell).

Tauqeer was of always of religious bent of mind. "In his teenage years, he started visiting the Muslim Charitable Library near his house, where he read about and took a keen interest in issues related to Islam. He also started taking part in social gatherings on religious issues," revealed Kushwaha.

The youngster's life changed when he met Riyaz Bhatkal, then studying in Byculla College. With Bhatkal, he later went on to found IM. But even before that, his first brush with the law came when he was booked under the Public Property Defacement Act for putting up provocative posters against the demolition of the Babri Masjid on the walls of government installations in Mumbai in the company of associates named Tariq Ismail and Salim Sheikh.