Bengal Police On Nia Radar

[donganaaK]

The NIA has concluded that the two persons killed in the Burdwan blast on October 2 were Bangladeshi citizens, Shakil Ahmed and Suvon Mondal, who were preparing the IEDs for supplying them to Bangladesh and that there were lapses on the part of the State Government and the police in handling the case before it was taken over by the Central agency.

Considering the gravity of the matter, National Security Adviser Ajit Doval is scheduled to visit the blast site in Burdwan.

The NIA is likely to place a damaging report against West Bengal Government and its police to the Union Home Ministry highlighting the lapses and the lackadaisical approach with which it handled the high voltage Khagragarh bomb blast.

The agency is also probing if there is any link among a major bank heist in Karimnagar district of Telangana, Khandwa jailbreak and the Burdwan blast after the investigators found wads of currency notes with the cover of State Bank of India, Choppadandi Branch of Karimnagar district, in the house where the two alleged operatives were killed in the accidental blast.

A team of NIA visited Choppadandi, where four armed men had looted Rs46 lakh on February 1. The NIA is trying to find out how the currency looted in Karimnagar had reached Burdwan. The footage of CCTV camera at the bank showed that four armed intruders looted the bank at gunpoint.  

The intelligence agencies are further ascertaining the outflow of the funds of the chit fund companies to Bangladesh and the quantum of rerouting the same back into India for jehadi activities.

The probe by the intelligence agencies has revealed that certain leaders of the mainstream political parties of Bangladesh were also involved in money laundering related to funding of the terror group Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) based in the neighbouring country.

The NIA’s initial probe so far has pointed out that both the Bangladeshi citizens were active members of JMB.

The agency will soon announce cash rewards for any information leading to the arrest of accused persons, including JMB members from Bangladesh, NIA officials said.

“Investigation so far has revealed that the accused persons and their associates were the members of JMB, a terrorist organisation proscribed in Bangladesh and they were preparing the IEDs which were being transported to Bangladesh,” the NIA said in a statement in New Delhi.

While Ahmed and Mondal were killed on the spot while fabricating the IEDs, another operative Abdul Hakim, alias Hassan, was injured and is currently recuperating in a hospital under judicial custody.

The NIA has completed the interrogation of the two arrested women accused in the case and the agency is continuing with the questioning of another accused Badre Alam, whose custody to the agency has been extended till October 31. Interrogation of Hassan will begin after he is discharged from hospital. 

NIA Director General Sharad Kumar on Friday visited Burdwan and Murshidabad and inspected the scene of crime and took stock of the field investigations conducted by the Kolkata unit of the agency. 

According to sources the terror network had spread alarmingly in about 5-6 districts of Bengal bordering Bangladesh. These districts include Burdwan, Murshidabad, Nadia, Birbhum, Malda, Coochbehar and North Dinajpur. The NIA is particularly focusing on a 19-km stretch in Coochbehar where the border has no barbed fencing, sources said.

The NIA’s report to the MHA could include the State Police failure to recognise the gravity of the case and letting go the vital time and evidence off its hands in the first one week of the blast.

While the blast occurred on October 2, the NIA took charge 10 days later. And in between the State Police’s lax handling of things helped the terrorists and links from other areas to slip out of their hideouts, NIA sources said adding the agency had to requisition the help of the central paramilitary forces to help it in the probe.

The NIA is also likely to express its displeasure against the State Health Department having failed to access Abdul Hakim, a third militant injured in the blast and undergoing treatment in the Government-run SSKM Hospital.

In fact, it moved a city court complaining against the Hospital Superintendent for not providing them with his heath report. The court ordered the Hospital Superintendent to provide the report before October 31.

BJP’s central observer for West Bengal Siddharthnath Singh said that there could be a link between Saradha chit fund and the terror activities in Khagragarh and elsewhere. He said that “newspaper reports indicate that the poor people from Bengal were looted by the Trinamool in Saradha case and the fund was then diverted to the JMB so that it could organise voters in its favour in the border districts.”