Plans By Bangladeshi Islamic Terror Outfit To Kill RSS Leaders And Trigger Trouble Foiled By Assam Police

In an ongoing anti-terror operation, Assam Police’s Special Task Force (STF) have arrested eight terrorists belonging to the Bangladeshi terror outfit Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT) from Kerala, Bengal, and Assam. 

A nationwide operation, ‘Op Praghat’ has foiled the terrorists’ plans to kill leaders of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and other Hindu organisations to incite communal trouble and destabilise Bengal and the northeastern region. 

The ABT, an affiliate of Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), has accelerated its efforts to infiltrate into India and recruit cadres in this country in recent months, no doubt with the covert backing of the new dispensation in Bangladesh headed by Muhammad Yunus.

The STF’s investigations revealed that the ABT sent a senior operative, Mohammad Sad Radi, alias Mohammad Sad Sheikh, a resident of Rajshahi in Bangladesh, to India in early November this year to recruit people and constitute sleeper cells. 

These sleeper cells, comprising highly radicalised Muslim men indoctrinated into the jihadist ideology, are constituted as covert operational units for use at an appropriate time to carry out subversive and violent activities. 

Radi (the Bangladeshi ABT operative) visited Assam, Bengal, and then Kerala in the weeks following his (surreptitious) entry into India. He met with various ABT operatives who were already present in these states and, through them, was recruiting more men into the outfit. 

Radi was also setting up a network to coordinate the activities of various sleeper cells in the three states.

The entire operation was directed and monitored from Bangladesh by Mohammad Farhan Israk, a close associate of ABT chief Mohammad Jasimuddin Rahmani. 

The key ABT operatives in Bengal and Assam who helped Radi (the Bangladeshi operative) reach out to others and kept him in various safe houses were Nur Islam Mandal and Mojibar Rahaman, both residents of Kokrajhar district in Assam.

The three of them identified radicalised Muslims who were willing to join the ABT and carry out subversive activities.

“The ABT recruiters exploited local vulnerabilities, religious sentiments, and fault lines to recruit Muslims who had already been radicalised into the ABT’s sleeper cells. These recruits were being taught how to operate under the radar and in subversive and violent activities,” STF chief and Inspector General of Police Partha Sarathi Mahanta told Swarajya. 

The STF’s investigations and the subsequent interrogation of Radi, who was arrested from Kerala, and Mondal and Rahaman (both arrested from Assam) revealed shocking details of their plans to target and assassinate members of the RSS and other Hindu organisations.  

“They were preparing to kill RSS leaders and some senior figures in some Hindu organisations. We arrested them in time and busted their plans,” Mahanta added. 

The investigations and interrogations of the arrested, especially Radi, Mandal, and Rahaman, have revealed that the three held a series of meetings with radical clerics at Falakata (in Alipurduar, North Bengal) and Murshidabad (south Bengal) to identify Islamist fundamentalists who could be recruited into the ABT’s sleeper cells. 

Plots were also hatched at these meetings to kill leaders and members of the RSS and Hindu organisations. The targets to be killed were identified at these meetings.

Detailed plans were devised at these meetings on the modus operandi of the killings, with an emphasis on making the killings brutal in order to provoke outrage among Hindus. 

Such killings, as per the ABT’s gameplan, would trigger widespread communal tensions and disturbances in Bengal and Assam and would destabilise major parts of the two states, especially the districts along the Indo-Bangladesh border. 

It may be mentioned that large-scale and unabated influx of millions of Bengali-speaking Muslims from East Pakistan, and subsequently Bangladesh, since the 1950s has changed the demography of these border districts (read this). 

Bengali-speaking Muslims of Bangladeshi origin now form an overwhelming majority in these areas. Poor and uneducated, most of them have been vulnerable to brainwashing by bigoted and radical Islamist clerics and preachers. 

Thus, radicalised Bengali-speaking Muslims of Bangladeshi origin, whose loyalties lie with Islam and Bangladesh and not India, form a majority of the population of these border districts. 

As per the ABT’s well laid-out plans that were foiled by Assam Police’s STF, the brutal killings of leaders and members of the RSS and Hindu organisations in Bengal and Assam would have triggered a backlash against Muslims in the two states. 

The ABT sleeper cells would have, after the killings of the RSS and Hindu functionaries, carried out various subversive activities like sabotaging communication links in Bengal, especially the vulnerable Chicken’s Neck Corridor, and in Assam and attacking the security establishments in these states. 

Members of these sleeper cells would also have carried out more targeted killings that would have escalated violence and created a Manipur-like situation in Bengal, Assam, and Tripura.

Quite like the Kukis of Manipur who are demanding separation from Manipur, the Bangladeshi-origin Muslims in the border districts of Bengal, Assam, and Tripura would then have demanded separation from India and integration of the districts with Bangladesh. 

It may be mentioned here that not only Islamist terror outfits of Bangladesh but also many in the present government there speak of expanding the territorial limits of Bangladesh to include large parts of Bengal, Assam, and Tripura. 

Recently, Mahfuz Alam, a powerful man in the Yunus dispensation, who is suspected of having strong links with terror outfit Hizb ut-Tahrir (HuT), posted on social media, alleging India’s ‘containment’ of Bangladesh and displaying a map that included most of Bengal, Assam, and other northeastern states as part of his country.

Though Alam, who is an adviser (de facto minister) and special assistant to Yunus, deleted the post, it indicated the anti-India mindset of the powerful elements in the present Bangladesh government. 

The STF’s investigations and interrogations, said chief Mahanta, also revealed that the arrested, especially Mandal and Rahaman, “were actively involved in procuring arms and ammunition as part of a larger conspiracy to wage war against India.”

Operation Praghat (Praghat means to strike) is in progress and will unearth more nodes of the terror network that seems to have spread across the country, said Mahanta. 

The eight who were arrested in simultaneous operations carried out across Kerala, Bengal, and Assam by the STF in collaboration with the police forces of Bengal and Kerala were Mohammad Sad Radi (arrested from Kerala), Minarul Sheikh, and Mohammad Abbas Ali (both from Murshidabad in Bengal), and Nur Islam Mandal, Abdul Karim Mandal, Mojibar Rahaman, Hamidul Islam, and Enamul Hoque (all from Assam). All are aged between 30 and 46 years. 

Documents and mobile phones seized from the eight revealed that they were in continuous communication with functionaries of terror outfits and radical Islamist organisations based in Bangladesh and Pakistan over the past few months. 

The eight had been receiving a stream of instructions on reaching out to designated radical Islamist clerics and taking their help to identify and recruit men into sleeper cells. Their handlers in Pakistan and Bangladesh were also passing on instructions on how to stay under the radar and avoid detection. 

A lot of radical Islamist literature preaching hatred against non-Muslims, especially Hindus, and advocating violence against kafirs were also recovered from the arrested terrorists. All that material also advocated carrying out subversive activities against India. 

This jihadist literature was being distributed to indoctrinated Muslims and turn them into radical jihadists, who would then be recruited into the ABT sleeper cells. 

It may be mentioned here that two senior operatives of another proscribed Islamist terror outfit, the HuT, entered India legally with valid documents in May this year through a land border post in Bengal (read this). 

The two, identified as Sabbir Amir and Ridwan Manuf, have over the past few months been addressing small gatherings of students of colleges and universities in Bengal and trying to recruit them. 

The HuT targets college and university students and educated professionals, especially those from middle-class and well-to-do families. 

A massive manhunt has been launched across Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand, and Odisha to nab the duo, but they have remained elusive so far. 

The HuT, say Indian intelligence agencies, has set up some modules in India, especially in the eastern states. 

Apart from the ABT and HuT, other Islamist terror outfits of Bangladesh, like the Jama’atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), have also spread their tentacles into India and are said to have recruited radicalised Muslims. 

All these outfits have also intensified their operations to infiltrate into India, recruit Muslims into their sleeper cells, and plan subversive activities in India after the fall of the Sheikh Hasina government. 

The Yunus government is not only turning a blind eye to the activities of these Islamist radical and terror outfits but is also encouraging them. Yunus has allowed them a free rein in exchange for their support. 

This has very grave security implications for India.

Also Read:

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

Islamists’ Dream Of Choking Chicken’s Neck Corridor To Cut Off Northeast India Can Come True, Thanks To Complete Demographic Change