Peerbhoy - A Jihadi Hacker

Mohammed Mansoor Asgar Peerbhoy, is a 31-year-old techie for Yahoo earning Rupees 19 lakh per annum.His mother is a lecturer ,father a business-man,one brother a chest specialist in UK and another brother is a architect.He is a expert at NGINX an internet software. Peerbhoy finished his schooling from Rosary School in the Camp area of Pune. He scored 93 percent marks in his 10th standard exams and 98 percent in his 12th standard. He studied computer engineering at a Pune college and has been working with the MNC since 2003.With such a background who would think of getting involved with terror and bomb blasts, who would think of heading the “media cell” of Indian Mujahideen .

Indeed Peerbhoy has thought so and is the main suspect who drafted and sent e-mails that spewed venom at the government and politicians minutes before the recent bomb blasts in India.

Peerbhoy’s radicalisation began in late 2006 when Riyaz Bhatkal spotted him at a local mosque. Bhatkal introduced him to mechanical engineer Asif Bashir Shaikh, arrested for his role in planting the bombs in Surat, who then indoctrinated Peerbhoy through sustained brainwashing. He was made to read jihadi literature and see footage of the Palestine conflict, Iraq, Godhra and the 1993 Mumbai riots. Besides this, he was also taken to meet several ideologues and hear their speeches Mansoor, whose knowledge of computers and software is rated as exceptional, revealed how Indian Mujahideen spotters — Akbar and Arif — scanned those coming for Arabic lessons at Quran Foundation to seek recruits. Akbar would take recruits to meet Bhatkal brothers — Iqbal and Riaz, the two frontranking jehadis from Bhatkal in coastal Karnataka who had rented a flat in Pune's Kondwa locality.

Peerbhoy was living at the A-Wing Central Park camp in Pune. ( But the facade masked a fanatical commitment to a jehad against "tormentors" of Muslims. Intelligence sources who collaborated with Mumbai police to arrest Mansoor and others of an Indian Mujahideen cell conspiring to wreak mayhem in Mumbai were struck by the techie terrorist's utter lack of remorse.

"We are ready to face any consequence," he stoically remarked when one of his interrogators asked him whether he had ever paused to think what would befall him in the event of his being apprehended. "We are not bothered about what happens in this life," Mansoor snapped, revealing the depth of radical zeal that can turn educated and "regular" guys into jehadis who do not flinch from mass murders of innocents. Nor did the 31-year-old from Pune look particularly perturbed by the likely fallout of his diabolic enterprise for his wife, a homoeopath with a BHMS degree, and kid. "Allah will take care (of them)," he said coolly when asked why even concern for loved ones failed to deter him from taking to the path of violence and risk when things were going fine for him.