Many of these infiltrators work as migrant labourers and brainwash the gullible.
NEW DELHI: The increasing presence of extremists linked to terrorist organisations in Bangladesh, from across the border districts of West Bengal, has become a cause for worry for both the Central and State intelligence agencies.
The West Bengal Special Task Force (STF), tasked with catching extremists in the state, has said that the infiltration of extremists and brainwashed individuals through the porous Indo-Bangladesh border has created an unprecedented situation in the border districts of Bengal, particularly in the districts of North and South 24 Parganas, Malda and Murshidabad.
In the recent past, several individuals linked to Al Qaeda and JMB (Jamaat-Ul-Mujahideen–Bangladesh) have been arrested by the West Bengal STF, the intelligence wing of the West Bengal police.
Sources within the Bengal police and intelligence agencies say that information about at least three modules of the Al Qaeda, tasked to spread terror on the Indian subcontinent have been received.
The last few months also saw at least seven people linked to these terrorist organisations being arrested by the Bengal police from across various parts of the country. Sources in the West Bengal intelligence agencies told The Sunday Guardian that “jihadi elements” are being pushed into India through the Bangladesh border in the wee hours and post reaching India, they are being given shelter in Indian households of individuals linked to extremist ideologies across the border.
“When these brainwashed people are pushed into India they are received by their handlers on the Indian side. They are given shelter in the nearby houses, madrasas and even mosques so that suspicions are evaded. These people are then pushed deeper into the Indian mainland to brainwash gullible individuals and bring them into the terror fold. We have seen such situations prevailing especially in districts like Malda, South and parts of North 24 Parganas and even in some parts of Howrah and Murshidabad,” a source in the Bengal intelligence agency told this newspaper.
In September, four members of Al-Qaeda’s sub-continental branch—Al-Qaeda in Indian Subcontinent or AQIS—were arrested by the Bengal intelligence unit and it has been revealed that this organisation has not only spread its tentacles in Bengal, but also across the country. “Individuals linked to the AQIS have been able to reach Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Mumbai, Hyderabad and even to states in the southern part of India. The modus operandi is that these people start working as migrant labourers and in turn help brainwash the gullible labourers towards jihad. We have also learnt that youths from various districts of Bengal have been influenced by these individuals who have entered India through Bangladesh,” a Bengal police officer linked to the STF told The Sunday Guardian.
Sources also said that one of the bigger bases of Al Qaeda’s sub-continental branch is in Assam, where many of its top leaders have found shelter in the border districts. The North Bengal districts are also turning into a notorious hub for these extremists, where they take shelter once they move from the Northeast to the mainland. Sources said that the multiple arrests of people linked to the AQIS have also revealed that at least three modules of the organisation were running in Bengal, and the outfit was also creating sleeper cells in Uttar Pradesh, Mumbai and in Madhya Pradesh.
Ekramul Haque and Zaheeruddin Ali, linked to Al Qaeda, arrested from Madhya Pradesh by the state’s ATS earlier last month, revealed that they were Bangladeshi nationals, who had entered India in 2020 and then later moved to Madhya Pradesh as they were tasked with recruiting youths for the purpose of jihad.
The arrest of Saddam Hussain Khan linked to AQIS from Mumbai in September revealed that he was staying in Mumbai in the guise of a daily wage labourer and had been able to convert at least 13 people towards “jihad”. Saddam too is a Bangladeshi national, who was working at the behest of the JMB operative in Bangladesh and had entered India through the Assam border.
Sources indicated that the activities of these terror linked individuals started to increase in parts of Bengal and in other parts of the country since the lockdown in 2020, and when the country was fighting against Covid-19, Bangladeshi JMB used the opportunity to push individuals into India and spread terrorism in the country.
Sources also said that these new entrants from Bangladesh have been using sophisticated communication tools and online applications to communicate with each other. Officers in the Bengal intelligence agency said that they have come to know about this technology and are in the process of decoding the same. They also said that many conversations which were happening in coded language were being decoded to understand the depth of these extremists’ penetration in the country.