Islamist Terror Outfit Operatives Who Entered Bengal From Bangladesh Suspected To Be Recruiting And Setting Up Modules In State

Two senior operatives of proscribed Islamist terror outfit, Hizb ut-Tahrir (HuT) Bangladesh, who entered Bengal with valid visas on May 30 are suspected to be recruiting students and young professionals and establishing terror modules in Bengal and neighbouring states. 

Indian intelligence agencies have sounded an alert over the duo, Sabbir Amir and Ridwan Manuf, who have, over the past few months, been addressing small gatherings of students of colleges and universities in Bengal and trying to recruit them. 

The Intelligence Bureau (IB) has asked state police forces and state intelligence agencies in Bengal. Assam, Bihar, Jharkhand and Odisha to hunt down the two HuT operatives. 

“It is alarming that they could obtain visas to enter India. That means either a thorough check on their backgrounds was not carried out before granting them visas, or security agencies in Bangladesh did not share information on their background,” a senior IB officer told Swarajya. 

The HuT, a global terror outfit founded in Jerusalem in 1953 with the objective of uniting all Muslim nations under a single caliphate, established its presence in Bangladesh in 2000. It was banned by the erstwhile Sheikh Hasina government in 2009, but has been operating covertly despite the ban.

A senior Bengal police officer said the two HuT leaders may have crossed over into Bengal through a land border post in May this year without setting off alarm bells because the HuT was not a banned outfit in India at that time. 

The Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) banned the HuT only on October 10 after the presence of many HuT modules were reported from some Indian states. HuT operatives were arrested over the past couple of months from Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Telangana and Tamil Nadu. 

What sets the HuT apart from other Islamist terror outfits and, thus, makes it more dangerous is its appeal amongst the educated classes. The nascent HuT organisation in India is following the strategy of its parent unit in Bangladesh, say IB sources.   

The HuT in Bangladesh spread its influence among the educated young men of the country. Its chief coordinator in Bangladesh was Mohiuddin Ahmed, a teacher of Dhaka University who went underground after the outfit was proscribed in Bangladesh in 2009. 

“Unlike the Jamaat-e-Islami whose appeal is primarily limited to the uneducated classes, the HuT’s support base lies among the educated youth, many of them from middle classes and well-to-do families. Almost all its operatives are graduates and postgraduates and the outfit has many sympathisers who are powerful. It has infiltrated the judiciary, bureaucracy and even some security agencies,” Iftekar Rahman Mansoor, a counter-terrorism expert who retired as a senior Army officer, told Swarajya over phone from Dhaka. 

In Bangladesh, the HuT had tapped into educated youth’s disillusionment and resentment over growing unemployment in the country, political corruption, rampant nepotism and misgovernance, and state repression of independent and dissenting voices.

Widespread disenchantment with the Sheikh Hasina government among the educated classes was leveraged by the HuT to spread its ideology and recruit bright young men into the outfit. 

The HuT’s appeal among the young elite of Bangladesh can be judged from the fact that in early October, senior students from some of the most prestigious schools in Dhaka marched through the streets carrying black ISIS flags with the Shahada (the Islamic declaration of faith) written in Arabic calligraphy on them. 

The students were demanding the establishment of a global caliphate. This event showed how the HuT had infiltrated educational institutions and radicalised young minds.    

The HuT’s strategy of targeting students of colleges and universities and the educated classes has sent alarm bells ringing in India’s security establishment. 

And that is why a manhunt has been launched to trace the two HuT operatives who have been working in Bengal, and neighbouring states as well, over the past six months. 

“We have reports that the two have not only addressed meetings and seminars on Islam at some places in Bengal, but have also managed to radicalise some young college and university students. The HuT is targeting students and the educated among the huge Muslim population in Bengal and neighbouring states,” the senior IB officer told Swarajya. 

“Through these seminars and meetings, they aim to brainwash Muslim college and university students, professionals and the educated classes, radicalise them and recruit them directly into the outfit or cultivate them as sympathisers who will help the outfit in future. We suspect the two have been able to radicalise some students and formed about half a dozen modules of the HuT in Bengal and Bihar,” the IB officer added. 

The duo managed to stay under the radar and avoid the eyes of both state and central security and intelligence agencies because they have been posing as Islamic scholars. 

“Their sponsors in Bengal have been introducing them as Islamic scholars. From what we’ve learnt so far, they have been operating very intelligently. They don’t deliver fiery speeches but make their point about Islam being in danger and Muslims being persecuted in India couched in very mild language. They watch out for reactions from those in the audience and zero in on those who seem very receptive to their subtle hate-mongering and victimhood narrative. And then they start working on those people, introducing them to jihadist ideology and ultimately recruiting them into the outfit,” the officer said. 

The Bengal police have reportedly given these inputs to the central intelligence agencies after a lot of investigations on the ground. 

The two senior HuT operatives, members of the outfit’s strategy and recruitment cell, have also been trawling social media profiles of Muslim students of Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha and Assam to detect those who display even faint Islamist leanings. 

“They get in touch with such students or young professionals and start radicalising them online. The Bengal police chanced upon one such case and then discovered the presence of the two HuT operatives,” said the IB officer. 

The HuT has been targeting Hindus and secular Muslims in Bangladesh and even murdering them. 

Dhaka’s elite North South University, which happens to be the country’s first private university, is the hub of the HuT and many of its students and faculty, including a former pro Vice Chancellor, have been linked directly to the terror outfit. 

The presence of the two top HuT operatives in Bengal has swivelled the attention of Indian security and intelligence agencies once again on terror outfits of Bangladesh spreading their influence across the border and setting up modules and sleeper cells in India. 

The Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT) and the Jama’atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) have spread their tentacles in India. These two have targeted mostly the peasants and poorer and educated sections of Muslims. 

But the HuT has a more dangerous strategy of targeting the educated and recruiting its cadres from among students, doctors, engineers, academics and other professionals. 

“The HuT is a far more dangerous terror outfit than the JMB or ABT since its leadership and cadres are all educated and intelligent people and know how to operate under the radar. Being educated and professionals, they also do not usually come under the lens of law enforcement and intelligence agencies,” the IB officer explained. 

The HuT has been banned in China, Russia, Pakistan, Germany, Turkey, UK, Central Asia, Indonesia and all Arab countries except Lebanon, Yemen and UAE. 

The MHA notification of October 10 announcing the ban on HuT said that the outfit is “involved in radicalisation and motivation of gullible youth to join terrorist organisations, such as ISIS, and raising funds for terror activities”. 

“Hizb ut-Tahrir (HuT) is an organisation which aims to establish Islamic State and caliphate globally including in India by overthrowing democratically elected governments through jihad and terrorist activities by involving citizens of the country, which is a grave threat to the democratic setup and internal security of the country,” the notification read. 

The HuT has, since the fall of the Sheikh Hasina government in Bangladesh, become very active and has been holding rallies and meetings. Mahfuz Alam, an advisor and special assistant to Mohammad Yunus, the head of the interim government, is reported to have been linked to the HuT. 

The HuT had openly demanded that the ban imposed on it by the Sheikh Hasina government be lifted, just like a similar ban on the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami imposed by Hasina was lifted by Yunus.