The intelligence agencies have stumbled upon facts showing how dreaded terror outfit Jamat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh has received huge amount of money from some businessmen residing in Bengal, particularly Kolkata.
This was revealed following sustained interrogation of the six terrorists arrested in the recent past. Officers of the National Investigation Agency which last week got the custody of six JMB terrorists including its Bengal head Maulana Yusuf, Anwar Hussein Faruk, Mohammad Rubel, Abul Kalam, Zahidul Islam, Sahidul Islam. The NIA officials said that funds were not only raised from interior villages of Murshidabad, Birbhum, Nadia and Malda districts but also capital Kolkata. Out of the proceeds terror camps were set up and logistics to manufacture bombs and fire arms were acquired.
Yusuf managed to construct a palatial Simulia madarsa from where he ran his terror activities that included indoctrination of the youth, recruitment, training before exporting them to Bangladesh.
The officials are trying to ascertain whether part of this fund was used set up workshops at Malda where AK-22 assault rifles were manufactured by the gunsmiths of Munger in Bihar under the training of Pakistani experts pushed in by the ISI.
“A considerable amount of money came from some businessmen in Kolkata. We are trying to ascertain the source of this money,” said intelligence sources adding process of interrogation was still.
JMB’s Bengal connection was revealed in the wake of an accidental blast on October 2, 2014 when two terrorists were killed while making bombs inside a house at Khagragarh in Burdwan district. Subsequent investigation by the NIA blew the lid off an elaborate terror network functioning in the bordering districts of Bengal.
Incidentally, the sleuths trying to ascertain the role of Sharada and other chit fund money in setting up of terror networks earlier bumped into what they say a “deadly cocktail of hawala operation, money laundering and round-tipping of illicit money vial tax havens and NGO to fund terror operations in India and Bangladesh.”
While investigating the terror-chit fund links the agencies like the Financial Intelligence Unit found that about `800 crore mostly raised by the Sharada network was transferred abroad between 2009 and 2012.
Curiously the proliferation of chit fund business during the corresponding period saw the phenomenal rise of Trinamool Congress --- which incidentally has been enjoying great control over the minority vote base that catapulted it to power.
Not only the names of a galaxy of top Trinamool leaders got embroiled in the chit fund controversy, but also the opposition claimed how one of these leaders played a role in siphoning funds to the Middle East through hawala racket.
The modus operandi was simple. The cash was first transferred to some NGOs some of which had been blacklisted in the US for their alleged links with the Al Quaeda. Then the money was transferred to real estate business in the Middle East including Kuwait from where the cash was transferred back to Bengal and Bangladesh in the name of revival of Islamic legacy.
“The job is to find out the link between these funds and the ones that were raised from Kolkata and elsewhere and terror networks” officials said adding the arrested terrorists were trying mislead the investigators.