Six suspected Bangladeshi terrorists held as NIA continues search in Burdwan blast

KOLKATA: West Bengal police arrested six suspected Bangladeshi militants on Monday in the Uttarpara area near the Basirhat border of West Bengal’s North 24 Parganas district.

Speaking to Gulf News, Superintendent of Police North 24 Parganas said, “We have nabbed a group of six militants, who were arrested on suspicion by local agent [that they] had enter[ed] India illegally last week.” According to the police, all these militants belong to Bangladesh’s Narayanganj city and further investigations were ongoing.

Meanwhile the National Investigative Agency (NIA), which is investigating the blast in West Bengal’s Burdwan district on Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday, which killed two Bangladeshi bomb makers affiliated to the terrorist outfit Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), has drawn a dark picture of West Bengal as India’s new terror hub.

“There are many such sleeper cells in the state and many more such terrorists are sent across the border as the terrorist organisations are keen to make the state a hub for carrying out attacks all over India,” said an officer of the NIA.

NIA team led by Superintended of Police Vikram Khalate has already conducted raids in various places of the state, and a chilling silhouette that now defines a new cartography of terror has emerged.

Subsequent arrests and scrutiny of the call records of the terrorists unravels the strategy of Al Qaida and JMB in India to create terror modules in West Bengal to carry out attacks across the country; especially in Uttar Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir.

Sources in several national agencies indicate that the state is turning into one of the leading arenas for terror recruitment after successful crackdowns on insurgent factories in Bihar and UP, thereby blunting the terrorists’ efforts.

“Bengal is certainly now the breeding ground for terrorists, especially for the outfits operating in Bangladesh, which is using its porous border to sneak into the country,” said an senior official of the National Intelligence Department.

The recent terror activities documented by South Asian Terrorism Portal (SATP) reveal at least one terror-related arrest or swoop down happens every month in West Bengal. Since January this year, at least 39 terror-related incidents have been reported in the state.

“Due to lack for preparedness of the state machinery, terrorists are finding it easy to source materials from the state or use it as a corridor to enter India,” the official added.

Ammonia nitrate for the explosive devices that killed 21 people in Varanasi in 2006 was bought from the Burrabazar wholesale market at Kolkata. It is also suspected that the raw material for explosives that tore through Pune’s German Bakery in 2010 was given to Bhatkal in Kolkata by an Indian Mujahedeen operative native to the border district of Nadia.

Central intelligence agencies that carried out investigations in Burdwan district have collected evidence of a “multi-nation terror module” and exchange programs between terror outfits of India and Bangladesh.

“Interrogation reveals that terrorists were not given any task by their senior leaders in Bangladesh. They were asked to stay put in safe houses until their missions were assigned,” the officer added.

Sources further inform that the mastermind behind this large operation to recruit terrorists is Abdul Qader Sultan Armar, who hails from the coastal town of Bhatkal in Karnataka, and is presently operating from Waziristan near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

“The terrorists were certainly planning to carry out attacks on religious, commercial and offices of certain political parties in the state in the wake of Al Qaida’s call to launch its Indian outfit. We had even warned the West Bengal government as early as September this year that an imminent strike was possible during the Durga Pujas,” the officer added.