Al-Qaeda chief in region may be of Indian origin: Intel India’s intelligence agencies have begun investigating information that the head of al-Qaeda’s new unit in the subcontinent is a former Uttar Pradesh resident, highly-placed government sources have told The Indian Express.

Maulana Asim Umar, earlier reported to be a Pakistani national, is now believed to have studied at the famous Dar-ul-Uloom seminary in Deoband, before emigrating from India in the late-1990s.

The investigations were under way even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi told a Washington, DC-based think tank that terrorism in India was “exported, not home-grown”.

Both the UP Police and Intelligence Bureau (IB) have questioned figures linked to the Islamist movement in India in the 1990s, seeking details on any Indian national who may have moved abroad.

Intelligence sources said their inquiries had focussed on former members of the now-proscribed Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), whose cadres were enthusiastic in their support for al-Qaeda and the Taliban regime that took power in Afghanistan in 1996.

“No firm details have emerged so far,” one intelligence official said. “But from the bits and pieces of information we have, we’re increasingly convinced that Maulana Umar is likely of Indian origin, perhaps even an Indian national.”

The fact that the cleric has never appeared without a digital mask, the official said, “suggests he has something to hide, since the top jihadist leadership in Pakistan generally do not hesitate to show their faces”.

Maulana Ashraf Usmani, a spokesperson for the Deoband seminary, said that in the absence of identifying pictures, or approximate dates of residence, it was impossible to confirm — or deny — whether Maulana Umar had been a student there.

“Thousands of students go through here,” he said, “and we don’t have full records of the many who drop out”.

However, Maulana Usmani said, “I want to emphatically underline that the Dar-ul-Uloom Deoband is unequivocal in its condemnation of terrorism, and, indeed, in its opposition to all forms of wrongdoing. Wherever this man got his ideas, it was not here.”

From three separate Pakistani sources familiar with the jihadi movement, The Indian Express learned that Maulana Umar arrived in Pakistan in the late-1990s, and began studies at the Jamia Uloom-e-Islamia, a Karachi seminary that has produced several top jihadist leaders, including Maulana Masood Azhar, leader of the Jaish-e-Muhammad, Qari Saifullah Akhtar, who headed the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami, and Fazl-ur-Rehman Khalil, the leader of the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen.

Maulana Umar, the sources said, was mentored by Nizamuddin Shamzai, a cleric with close links to the Taliban, who once bragged about having been a “state guest” in Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar’s Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.

E-mail requests to the Jamia Uloom-e-Islamia, seeking confirmation of Maulana Umar’s residence and nationality, went unanswered. The seminary says on its website, though, that students from 60 countries, including India, have studied there.

After finishing his studies in Karachi, Maulana Umar is believed to have joined Fazl-ur-Rehman Khalil’s Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, teaching briefly at the Dar-ul-Uloom Haqqania seminary in Peshawar, and serving at the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen’s training camps in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

Following the events of 9/11, the sources said, Maulana Umar moved back to continued…