On Wednesday, March 16, the West Bengal Police’s Special Task Force (STF) arrested a madrasa teacher from Howrah’s Bankra for associating with the Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) and sheltering JMB terrorists.
Aniruddin Ansari originally comes from the district of Purulia and has been living in Howrah in rented accommodation and taught in a local madrassa.
In Ansari’s defence, fellow Muslim residents have come forward and asserted that he is a ‘good man.’ “He used to teach the children in a madrassa and lived alone. Occasionally outsiders would come, but nothing suspicious,” commented Nurul Hasan, a local of Munsidanga in Bankra. Sookat Ali Khan, another resident of the area, said, “He used to teach for a voluntary organization. I know him as a good boy.”
However, officials at the Special Task Force of the state police have something very different to say about Ansari. The arrested madrassa teacher had given shelter to two terrorists of the JMB in his Howrah accommodation, said the STF. The officials also said that Ansari used to make different kinds of fake identity cards for these terrorists and was involved in numerous sabotage operations in north-east Bharat.
The police have also recovered some identity cards from his possessions which establishes that he is a citizen of Bangladesh. But whether those documents are authentic or counterfeit needs to be examined. The police are still interrogating the accused. He was produced in court and sent to police remand for 12 days.
Though the Islamic terror group JMB was founded in Bangladesh in 1998, it has already established two factions in West Bengal. In 2005, the outfit was officially acknowledged as a terrorist group and banned by the government of Bangladesh; it has been spreading its tentacles across parts of Bharat. Members of this terrorist group were convicted in the 2018 Bodh Gaya serial bomb blasts case.
Shortly before the arrest of Ansari in West Bengal, the Madhya Pradesh Police arrested four terrorists from the JMB, namely Zahooruddin, Md Aqueel, Fazhar Zainul, and Fazhar Ali, on Sunday, March 13 from Bhopal. The officials have confirmed that all of them are residents of Bangladesh.
In recent months, human trafficking rings involved in bringing Bangladeshi and Rohingya Muslims illegally into Bharat, creating fake identity documents including passports in Hindu names, have been busted across the country, from places as widespread as Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Karnataka.
Almost every week, Bharatiya security forces arrest Bangladeshis crossing over illegally into Bharat, chiefly through the West Bengal border. The WB state government’s absolute indifference to the growing threat these illegal trespassers can lead to is exacerbating the problem. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s aversion to the extended scope granted to BSF also encourages the illegal Bangladeshis and criminal elements in her state to act with impunity.
Acting on a tip-off on February 21, the 148 battalion troops of the Border Security Force (BSF) held seven Bangladeshi residents from Changrabandha of Cooch Behar, West Bengal. The detainees include three women, a man, and three minors, all of whom are alleged to have entered Bharat illegally.
“The seven persons had infiltrated India from Bangladesh and had taken a bus to reach Siliguri. They had also made plans to reach Jaipur (in Rajasthan) from Siliguri to earn their livelihood,” informed a BSF source.
“All of them have been handed over to the police at the Mekhliganj police station,” he added. The BSF had also carried out anti-smuggling drives along the Bharat-Bangladesh border at the north Bengal frontier and detained several illegally imported items, including cough syrup bottles and cattle priced at 2.92 lakh.
