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ABVP to issue white paper on Islamic fundamentalist groups in TN

The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad will prepare a 'white paper' on the activities of Islamic fundamentalist groups in Tamil Nadu on the basis of its three-member fact-finding team, and discuss it at the ABVP national executive council to be held at Calcutta on May 24 to 27.

ABVP general secretary Mahendra Kumar and former general secretary V Muralidharan, who are part of the team, blamed the TN government for failing to curb the activities of fundamentalists despite prior information from various intelligence sources. This had resulted in the February 14 serial blasts at Coimbatore.

They said the information collected by the team which had toured the state from May 4 to 7 revealed that the culprits in several murder cases, who belonged to these outfits, were yet to be nabbed. This was despite the police crackdown and surveillance on fundamentalist outfits in the aftermath of the serial blasts.

Former ABVP state unit vice-president K R Paramasivam had been murdered on March 28, they pointed out.

When Mahendra Kumar alleged some politicians in the ruling DMK had links with Islamic fundamentalists, newspersons asked him to react to the report of the 1995 BJP fact-finding team, which spoke of links between these groups and the then ruling All India Anna DMK.

At this stage, Mahendra Kumar was at pains to make it clear that the ABVP was not indulging in "selective" fact-finding to blame the party in power at a given point of time.

He said the ABVP felt that the roots of Islamic fundamentalism in the state could be traced to the early 'eighties, when incidents of sporadic attacks by "emboldened Islamic fundamentalist outfits" took place.

He also criticised the ideologies of the Dravida Kazhagam and the DMK which were bent upon "dividing society". This ultimately encouraged the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, he added.

Replying to a question, Mahendra Kumar said the team felt that the state government's drive against these outfits was more out of the fear that the Centre would invoke Article 356 to dismiss the DMK regime.

He said the team felt the Centre should constitute a special investigating machinery to probe the activities of these groups which had inter-state and international ramifications and the possible involvement of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence in such activities.

UNI

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