Security and intelligence networks, both by Central and state agencies, are on high alert following intelligence inputs about plans of Bangladesh-based fundamentalist group Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) to set up modules in minority-dominated pockets in seven districts of West Bengal.
Sources said the intelligence inputs about the two-phase module creation plan were collected primarily through interrogation of the three recently arrested JMB associates. Last month, two were nabbed from Birbhum — Aazmal Hossain and Saheb Ali Khan — and one from South 24 Parganas, named Abasuddin Molla.
Besides, information has also been gathered through on-field inputs from sleuths of Central and state intelligence agencies.
Sources added that in the first phase, the Bangladeshi fundamentalist group targeted the three districts of Malda, Murshidabad, and North Dinajpur for this module creation. After completing the process in these three districts, their next four targets would be North 24 Parganas, South 24 Parganas, Nadia, and Birbhum districts.
An insider in the state police said that the plan had been done in such a manner that it covers the most sensitive pockets in North Bengal and South Bengal.
While North Dinajpur and Malda districts are located in the northern sector of the state, the other five districts are in the southern sector. Barring Birbhum, all the other six districts have international borders with Bangladesh.
Birbhum, though, does not have any international border, but acts as an important connecting route between South Bengal and North Bengal via Murshidabad. To recall, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) investigation on the multi-crore cattle-smuggling case revealed that in that scam, Birbhum acted as the main transit route to Bangladesh via Murshidabad.
The modus operandi for the creation of the modules was first to brainwash youths, including minors, and subsequently include them in the sleeper cells. The police have secured the information about some of these youths who were targeted by the three arrested JMB activists.
The investigation officials have been able to track the Pakistan links of Abasuddin Molla, one of the three Indian associates of JMB who were arrested by the special task force (STF) of West Bengal Police earlier this month.
As per findings of the sleuths, the coded encrypted messages recovered from the mobile phones of Aazmal Hossain and Saheb Ali Khan showed their links with the associates of Bangladesh-based fundamentalist outfits, namely JMB, Hizb-ut-Tahrir (HUT), and Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT).
However, similar coded and encrypted messages recovered from the mobile phones of Molla showed his regular communication with some individuals based out of Pakistan as well as with some associates of the Jammu and Kashmir-based fundamentalist group Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind.
