The Assam Police have arrested eight people, including a Bangaldeshi national, for their alleged association with a global terrorist organisation (GTO) and planning to carry out terrorist activities in India, officials said on Thursday.
Assam’s Special DGP Harmeet Singh said the police launched ‘Operation Praghat’ earlier this month after a detailed and prolonged examination of intelligence inputs regarding anti-national activities.
Singh said the operation was initially carried out in various parts of Assam and West Bengal, and based on the information found during the search and arrests, the Special Task Force (STF) reached Kerala as well.
“With the active assistance of the Kerala and West Bengal Police against a known fundamentalist/jihadi global terrorist organisation, the Assam STF arrested eight fundamentalists, including one Bangladeshi national, from Kerala, thus unearthing a terror module, which was preparing to strike,” Singh said.
Singh along with Mahanta on Thursday shared the details of the arrests and the information regarding the plans of Bangladesh-based fundamentalists. Among the seven Indians arrested, two are residents of West Bengal while five are from Assam, according to Singh.
The arrested people have been identified as Md Sad Radi alias Shab Sheikh (36) from Bangladesh’s Rajshahi, Minarul Sheikh (40) and Md. Abbas Ali (33) from West Bengal’s Murshidabad, Nur Islam Mandal (40), Abdul Karim Mandal (30), Mojibar Rahman (46), Hamidul Islam (34) and Enamul Hoque (29) from Assam’s Kokrajhar and Dhubri.
Singh said that Sad Radi had entered India in November under the direction of one Md Farhan Israk, a close associate of Jasimuddin Rahmani (chief of Ansarullah Bangla Team, an affiliate of Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent, a GTO).
“Sad Radi was sent here to spread their nefarious ideology and to create sleeper cells among like-minded individuals across India, with an intention to cause violence and subversive actions in the country,” the special DGP said.
According to Singh, Radi visited Assam and West Bengal to meet sleeper cell activists of the banned Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT), before he moved to Kerala for the same purpose.
“They had plans to assassinate Hindu leaders, including leaders of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), to create tension here on religious grounds. We have found religious books with distorted versions of jihad and we believe that they were trying to include the people of some particular communities in their activities,” Singh said.
During the operations, the STF recovered some mobile phones with various suspicious applications, used for communicating with terrorist groups in Bangladesh and Pakistan, the officials said.
“This indicates their continuous communication across the border with Bangladesh and Pakistan based entities over the last couple of months,” officials said.
Police said that many incriminating texts, both in technical and physical form, religious books with distorted narratives, printed and published in Bangladesh were recovered during the operations.
Along with these, a Bangladesh national ID card and some other documents of the neighbouring country issued in the name of Md Sad Radi was found in the house of Assam’s Nur Islam Mandal, the police said.
Officials said that Sad Radi managed to create some sleeper cells across Assam and West Bengal in one month and these cells were intended to serve as covert operational units, poised for subversive and violent activities to disrupt peace as well as cause destruction to life and property.
“The seven Indians whom we have arrested played a pivotal role in aiding Sad Radi in his mission to identify, recruit and indoctrinate individuals who share or were inclined towards similar fundamentalist/jihadi ideologies,” Singh said.
He said that there is a possible connection between the jihadi activities and the recent infiltrations from Bangladesh.
“Since August 5, we have arrested such infiltrators almost every day, especially in districts sharing the border with Bangladesh. We are investigating if there is a larger plan by the jihadis and if these regular illegal entries to India are part of it,” he said.
Apart from these eight, the STF picked four persons from Assam’s Kokrajhar for interrogation, but they were released after preliminary investigation due to lack of evidence.
