Backed by Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence the terror groups like Jamat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh and ISIS have set up extensive network in Bengal taking advange of its porous borders with Bangladesh.
Senior officials in the State CID and the Special Task Force of the Kolkata Police fear already a few thousand people may have been recruited by the ISI-backed moles operating in districts like Birbhum, Malda, Murshidabad, Nadia, North and South 24 Parganas.
“While currency crisis in the form of demonetisation has given them a big jolt these people are using popyy trade as a major source of generating money,” said a senior STF official.
With the State Government failing to ensure enough support price for paddy a large number of farmers particularly in Malda and Birbhum have fallen into the trap of ISI and switched over to poppy cultivation, sources said adding the money generated from poppy-opium is diverted to sustain the terror network.
large-scale unemployment on account of decreasing industrial activity and flight of trading capital have added to the menace with the ISI taking full advantage of poverty. “The ISI is targeting the school pass-outs or high-school students particularly those who are good in studies but lack in resources to pursue their dreams,” a senior official said showing how Ashik Ahmed a polytechnic student from industrial city of Durgapur was arrested early this year.
“He was not only lured into terror network but also engaged to recruit moles for a network for the ISIS, “the official said. By the time Ashik was arrested he had already raised an army of moles in a number of districts.
Ashik was not the only case as the intelligence officials captured others Mehdi Masroor Biswas who was working for the ISI and had a common link with Bangladesh terror outfit like JMB.
“It is very easy for the masterminds sitting abroad to manipulate things in India. First they scan and scrutinse their profiles in the Net and then employ the local moles to get after them. They brain-wash them and recruit them for various works: mainly for carrying out more recruitments, smuggling arms and cows, transporting fake currency, training in making explosives as was evident from the Khagragarh blast case.”
They are also given jobs to collect data from the Army, Navy or Air bases. “Not very long ago an agent was arrested from the Army Comman Hospital at Alipore in Kolkata.”
The network is so elaborate and has such an extensive base that “in December last year the STF had arrested labourer, passport agents, bartenders, a college student, all representing diverse socio-economic strata making it difficult for the intelligence agencies to zero in on a particular group or identify a prototype plan being employed by them.”
On how demonetisation will affect the terror racket he said He added “will be interesting to monitor how the new measures have affected them. We are keeping a constant vigil on them.”