Swarajya Exclusive: Bengali Expats In South-East Asia Being Used By Pakistan, Bangladesh Terror Outfits To Send Funds To Modules In India

Pakistani and Bangladeshi terror outfits are using expatriates from Bengal working in Southeast Asia, mainly Malaysia and Indonesia, to send funds to the terror modules they have set up in Bengal and Assam.

This came to light with the busting of yet another Islamist terror module in West Bengal by the Bengal Police’s Special Task Force (STF).

The STF arrested the head of the module, Ajmol Hossain (28), from Nalhati in Birbhum district Friday (May 9). Another senior functionary of the module, Saheb Ali Khan (also 28), was picked up from Murari in the same district that day.

A third member of the module, Abbasuddin Molla (25), was arrested from Kolkata’s Muslim-majority Diamond Harbour areao on May 10. 

Intensive interrogation of the three arrested operatives of the module by senior STF officers revealed that Muslims from Malda, Murshidabad, Birbhum, Purba and Paschim Bardhaman, and South Parganas district of the state, who are employed mostly in menial jobs in Malaysia and Indonesia, are being used to send substantial sums of money to the terror module. 

The STF’s investigation of the money trail corroborated the revelations that have emerged from the interrogations of the three Islamist terrorists. The STF has shared all details with central intelligence agencies. 

A senior officer of the Intelligence Bureau (IB) who is closely monitoring the investigations by the Bengal STF told Swarajya that the routing of funds through expats is a new development. 

“This is very alarming as well. The terror outfits based in Bangladesh and Pakistan are doing this because of enhanced surveillance on hawala transactions. The hawala route which was being used by them has become unsafe, so they have turned to this new route,” the IB officer said. 

What’s alarming about this is that mounting vigil on remittances sent by all expats is a herculean task. 

“There are tens of thousands of people from Bengal working abroad. Keeping track of their remittances will be a huge task and will impose a strain on our organisational resources,” he said. 

Usually, sudden remittances of large sums of money through the usual banking channels raise red flags. 

However, in this case, the expats from Bengal were used to remit amounts as low as Rs 5,000 and Rs 10,000 to accounts in scheduled banks and also some rural and district cooperative banks. 

It is suspected that a few hundred expats were being used to remit small sums of money on a regular basis to accounts in banks and FIs in Bengal. 

“What is also cause for grave concern is that these expats who have allowed their accounts to be used to send money meant for use by the terror modules have been co-opted by the terror outfits. That means they have been radicalised and have become willing accomplices of the terror outfits,” said the IB officer. 

The three who have been arrested over last weekend are said to have established a terror module at the behest of the Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), a proscribed terror outfit. The JMB has close and organic ties with al-Qaeda in the Indian subcontinent (AQIS). 

Ajmol Hossain, who heads the module, was radicalised and recruited by the JMB’s operatives in Bengal about six years ago. 

Sometime in 2022, he was asked to set up a separate terror module.

Hossain was introduced to some operatives of Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT), another Bangladesh-based terror outfit that has set up an extensive network of sleeper cells in Assam, Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand and many other states of the country.

The ABT has links with the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). In fact, Hossain and Khan are learnt to have received training in firearms and making improvised explosive devices (IEDs) from the LeT. 

“Ajmol Hossain has a handler based in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) who sends instructions to him regularly. This handler used to send him large sums of money through the hawala route till about two years ago. But that route was discontinued perhaps because of intensive vigil mounted by Indian agencies on hawala transactions,” the IB officer told Swarajya. 

“Molla received instructions recently from his Pakistani handler to procure arms. He was promised a large sum of money for this,” said the officer. 

Bengal STF sources said that Ajmol Hossain, who was evaluated by his JMB sponsors as highly dedicated (to the cause of jihad), was tasked with the responsibility of forming a network of sympathisers and members across the districts of Birbhum, Malda, Murshidabad, and North and South 24 Parganas. 

“He (Ajmol) was issued clear-cut instructions on how to form the terror module and also establish sleeper cells, each comprising two to three hardline Islamists, all across south Bengal, Assam and Tripura. They were told to keep watch on young Muslim men and boys and radicalise the vulnerable ones. Detailed instructions on how to radicalise young Muslim boys and men were issued to them,” an STF officer told Swarajya. 

The first step, said the STF officer, was to identify vulnerable adolescents and teenagers and then bombard them with fake narratives highlighting persecution of Muslims in India. 

Ajmol Hossain and his associates had been organising religious mehfils in Malda and Murshidabad to promote radical Islam. 

Salafi clerics, some of them from Bangladesh, have been coming to address the religious gatherings. 

It is from these gatherings that potential recruits are identified. Those who evince interest in the highly radical sermons are singled out and then assigned to a ‘handler’ who usually sends him a lot of online material about radical Islam. 

“Over a period of time, these youngsters get radicalised and then the second phase of feeding them seditious and jihadi literature commences. They are fed a lot of jihadi ideology and brainwashed into becoming jihadis before being formally recruited into the JMB or ABT. This is all being done by senior JMB and ABT functionaries sitting in Bangladesh. These functionaries have very close ties with Pakistani terror outfits and the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI),” the STF officer said. 

Hossain told his interrogators that his handlers in Bangladesh had asked him to step up the recruitment drive. Plans were being finalised to train the new recruits in use of firearms and making IEDs. 

“A safe house along the Bengal-Jharkhand border was selected to impart training to the recruits from Bengal and Assam. The process of procuring firearms was on when we busted the module,” the STF officer added. 

However, most of the members of the sleeper cells as well as the new recruits have fled to other places after news of the arrest of the three top functionaries of the new terror module spread. 

“Tracking them down will take time. Another serious issue is the recruitment of expats from Bengal into the terror network as accomplices. This is very serious and has long-term implications. We will have to take this up with the governments of Malaysia and Indonesia through diplomatic channels to repatriate these people so that they can be prosecuted,” said the IB officer. 

“We have to now investigate how these expats were approached and convinced to become conduits to send funds to terror modules in Bengal. Some of them are working in Thailand as well, and all are in mostly menial jobs like cleaners, janitors, drivers and employees in eateries and shopping malls,” said the IB officer. 

“Keeping track of small amounts of money sent periodically by them to accounts of the members of terror modules here is quite impossible till a new system is evolved to raise red flags when such transactions take place. One way out is to designate a fixed recipient in India for every expat’s remittance so that an alert gets issued whenever any amount is remitted to any account other than the designated account. But putting in place such an elaborate system will take time and a lot of work,” said the IB officer. 

What has also triggered alarm in the intelligence community is the growing number of terror modules being busted in Bengal. 

“The Bengal STF is doing a good job, but the growing number of terror modules in the state with links to the JMB and ABT in Bangladesh is very alarming,” the IB officer told Swarajya. 

About a year ago, the Bengal STF busted a terror module that had named itself shahadat (martyrdom). The module was founded by a second-year computer science student, Mohammad Habibullah, who had already recruited some more youngsters (read this). 

In December last year, Assam Police’s STF arrested eight ABT terrorists from Bengal, Kerala and Assam (read this)

What is also worrying the intelligence agencies is Bangladesh emerging as a terror hub. The multiple terror outfits in Bangladesh, and the free run they have been given by the interim government headed by Mohammad Yunus, holds grave implications for India. 

“These Bangladeshi terror outfits, who have very close links with Pakistani terror outfits and also the ISI, are exporting terror to India. We will soon have a major problem on our eastern front as well,” said the top IB officer. 

Also read:

--'Shahadat' terror module bust — Bengal's radicalisation crisis is worsening due to lack of political will to act against Islamists

--Plans by Bangladeshi Islamic terror outfit to kill RSS leaders and trigger trouble foiled by Assam police