Kolkata: The Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has asked the border guarding agencies to intensify their patrolling along the India-Bangladesh border following intelligence inputs that Ansar Bangla Team (ABT), a unit of Al Qaeda in the Indian subcontinent is planning to enter into India from Bangladesh with the sole aim of setting up their base in the country.
Quoting intelligence reports, a senior Home Ministry official told ETV Bharat on Monday that many of the ABT members have already entered India. “They have already started indoctrination of gullible youths in Assam and remote areas of West Bengal,” the official said. The Assam police on Saturday arrested two imams Abdus Subhan and Jalaluddin Sheikh from lower Goalpara district, following inputs received after the arrest of one Abbas Ali, who also had jihadi links, in July.
“What has further aggravated the situation is the fact that jihadi members are moving in disguise of imams. And security agencies can’t arrest such people in the first instance. They are being arrested after getting proper and concrete evidence of their jihadi activities,” the official said.
In the past four months, Assam police arrested 23 persons, including a few from Bangladesh from across Assam for their alleged links to AQIS and ABT and for setting up jihadi sleeper cells. As per intelligence inputs, the majority of the ABP operatives who visited Assam to train up local youths, have entered India through the India-Bangladesh border.
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India and Bangladesh share a 4,096-kilometre-long international border including 262 km in Assam, 856 km in Tripura, 318 km in Mizoram, 443 km in Meghalaya and 2,217 km in West Bengal. “The jihadi members sneaked into India from the border districts of Bangladesh including Khulna, Rajshahi, Rangpur, Sylhet, and Chittagong,” the intelligence reports viewed by this correspondent said.
The majority of the ABT members sneaked into Assam after entering India from the West Bengal border. “After their entry into India, they stayed in West Bengal for some time and during the period they arranged fake identity cards,” the official said. Recently, a senior NIA official told ETV Bharat that people who sneaked into India illegally easily get ration cards, voter identity cards with the connivance of their local handlers.
A few ABT members also visit Deoband in Uttar Pradesh. “The ABT members are well versed with modern technology which makes the security agencies more difficult to detect the active members,” the home ministry official said. Earlier on 17 August, the special task force (STF) of West Bengal police arrested two suspected terrorists having links with Al-Qaeda from Shashan village under Barasat block in North 24 Parganas district of West Bengal.
During the interrogation, the suspected Al Qaeda militant Abdur Raqib disclosed that he was working as an Imam in two mosques in West Bengal and working to strengthen Al Qaeda's terrorist module in the state. Raqib was tasked to mark the area and identify the potential unemployed youths who can be used by them after brainwashing.
