Haren Pandya, Gujarat's former minister of state for home, was gunned down on March 26. His killing early one spring morning in Ahmedabad was political dynamite, severely embarrassing Chief Minister Narendra Modi, Pandya's arch-foe.

Now, more than a month after the event, CBI and police investigations have revealed not merely the extent of the conspiracy but also that young men from Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh are being taken to Pakistan to be schooled in Islamist militancy. A phenomenon thought to be limited to Jammu and Kashmir has expanded its geographical reach.

FIRST SHOT: Pandya may have been part of a hit list

This past week Muslim groups in both Ahmedabad and Hyderabad termed the police action in the Pandya case "misleading and high-handed". The law enforcers went about their task unfazed, arresting Mulla Kalim (aka Shahnawaz Gandhi) and Anas Machiswala.

The two Ahmedabad residents-also said to be behind the blasts in public buses in the city in May 2002-are charged with planning Pandya's killing and were arrested in Andhra Pradesh's Medak district. Still on the run is Sufian Ahmedmiya Patangia, maulvi of Ahmedabad's Lal Deobandi Masjid and, according to the police, the key to Operation Pandya.

In late April in Hyderabad, the CBI had arrested Asghar Ali-the man who actually pulled the trigger on March 26. Ali's interrogation revealed that he had facilitated the travel of many unemployed Muslim youth to Pakistan for arms training.

Ali made particular reference to five young men arrested by the Ahmedabad Crime Branch in the first week of April. Four of them were educated, fluent in English, children of wealthy business families, unlikely religious extremists. Riyaz Sareshwala, Yunus Sareshwala, Rehan Puthawala, Pervez Shaikh and Munnawar Beg (aka Captain Mirza) were sent to Pakistan by Patangia and Kalim in December 2002. They were trained in arms at a Jaish-e-Mohammed camp in the Kirtar Hills area, a three-hour drive from Karachi.

On their return home, they set up an ISI sleeper cell in Ahmedabad and provided logistical back-up for the Pandya murder. The idea of killing a Gujarat BJP politician was apparently that of Patangia and Rasool Khan (aka Rasool Party). Rasool had fled Ahmedabad in 1992, following the murder of Raoof Valiullah, former Congress MP. Escaping to Hyderabad, he set up base there for a few years, later landing up in Karachi and becoming part of underworld don Dawood Ibrahim's gang.

In December last year, Rasool received the five recruits from Ahmedabad at Karachi airport. They were then trained to become small-time terrorists and, specifically, help eliminate Sangh Parivar leaders. With the killing of Pandya, Rasool hit the bull's-eye.

Ensconced in Karachi, Rasool may be beyond Indian law. Patangia is more likely to be caught. The bigger worry is that almost all the accused are Sunni Bohras, members of a Muslim sect hitherto seen as moderate. The incursion of the radical Tableegh Jamaat-Deobandi school into the Sunni Bohra community has long been feared. After the Pandya case, it has been established-with the most tragic consequences.