A day after five members of a Bangladesh-based radical Islamic group were arrested in lower Assam’s Barpeta district, chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Sunday said “a few more such modules are active in the state and police are working against such activities”.
Sarma told the media, “Assam police have been able to unearth a big module working in the state. It was a big success for the Assam police. As per our information, a few more modules are active in the state. We had formed a special wing of Assam police to work on the information about the presence of jihadi activists and fundamentalists. We have developed sources at different levels. The information that came to light during the interrogation of the arrested accused has indicated a bad sign for the future of the state.”
The arrested members of the group Ansar al Islam, which is known to be the Bangladesh chapter of al-Qaida in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), have been identified as Saiful Islam alias Harun Rashid alias Mohammed Suman of Narayanganj district in Bangladesh, Khairul Islam, Badshah Suleiman Khan and Noushad Ali of Kalgachia in Barpeta district and Taimur Rahman Khan of Howly.
Barpeta superintendent of police Amitabh Sinha told TOI that all the accused have been remanded in police custody for eight days.
DGP Bhaskar Jyoti Mahanta said, “Saiful, after entering India, has been indoctrinating youths, belonging to a particular community in different parts of Assam, with jihadi and religious fundamentalism and has already spread its roots in the state,” he added.
Meanwhile, spokesperson of BJP’s Assam wing Ranjib Kumar Sharma told the media during a press conference in Guwahati, “On the line of international terrorist platform, ‘Haqqani network’, in Assam also an Islamic militant outfit ‘Al-Qaida in Indian Subcontinent’ has sprung up in the madrassas in char-chapori (riverine) areas in the form of sleeper cell covering a wide network.” He said, “Saturday’s arrest has exposed the wide network of the extremist outfit in the majority of the madrassas in the char-chapori areas of the state. In many of the private madrassas, anti-national activities are going on. We would like to urge the administration to keep a close watch on whether education is being imparted in those private madrassas in line with government madrassas.”