NIA arrests suspected Jaish-e-Mohammed associate in Bengal's Hooghly district

Kolkata (The Uttam Hindu): The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Friday arrested a youth from the Sanapara area in Hooghly district of West Bengal on suspicion of having links with the terrorist outfit Jaish-e-Mohammed, an official said.

The arrested youth has been identified as Sabiruddin. Sources aware of the development said that a hefty amount of cash, a mobile phone and a laptop have also been seized from Sabiruddin's residence. He has already been brought to the NIA office in Kolkata. Sources said that the NIA actions at Arambagh were part of the central agency's raids in 19 different places in eight different states including West Bengal, Bihar, Assam, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Jammu and Kashmir among others.

The arrest of the Jaish-e-Mohammed suspect at this juncture is extremely crucial considering that security and intelligence agencies, both central and state, have beefed up surveillance in the different border areas of West Bengal with neighbouring Bangladesh, in wake of the ongoing crisis there. There are also intelligence inputs of members of Bangladesh- based fundamentalists group Hizb-ut-Tahrir (HUT) are lately trying to be active in the bordering districts of West Bengal with Bangladesh and making attempts to set up sleeper-cells there.

There are also intelligence inputs about the sudden increase in the number of outsiders hiring rooms in different villages close to the international borders with Bangladesh. As per intelligence input, most of the new faces, who suddenly surfaced in the bordering villages, were aged between their mid-twenties and early thirties. As per input received by the security agencies from the natives of these villages, the new faces rarely interact with the local people. Intelligence agencies, sources added, have also got specific information that two active HUT associates recently came to West Bengal with valid Bangladeshi passports posing as students and had meetings with some local youths in Malda and Murshidabad districts.

These two HUT activists, as per intelligence inputs, initially picked up conversations with the local youths in these two districts discussing religious issues and thereafter carried on the conversation to the level of opening sleeper cells in the bordering districts. These two Bangladeshi citizens interacting with the local youth have been identified as Ridwan Maruf and Sabbir Amir.