Author: A Staff Reporter
Publication: The Telegraph
Date: November 20, 2002
Nine Bangladeshis - all suspected
ISI agents - were rounded up from opposite a movie theatre near New Market,
late on Saturday night, days after deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani charged
Bangladesh with doing very little to contain anti-India activities on its
soil.
Two of them (47-year-old Liaquat
and 30-year-old Arman from Dhaka) were arrested and remanded in police
custody. The others were handed over to Bangladeshi intelligence agencies,
officials said, explaining that they could not be arrested as there was
no specific charge against them.
Liaquat and Arman were operating
for the Islamic Aikya Front of Bangladesh and were trained in terrorist
activities by the ISI, officials added. Indian intelligence agencies' "internal
logbooks" listed the front as a cover organisation for al Qaida activists
now taking shelter in Bangladesh, a Central Bureau of Investigation deputy
inspector-general said in Delhi.
"We have specific information that
Arman, Liaquat and the others had come here with plans to spread terror,"
a Calcutta police official said. "We have recovered several incriminating
documents, including maps of defence and prohibited areas," he added.
The detective department used information
provided by the director-general of defence field intelligence's office
in Bangladesh to cement its allegation that the nine rounded up were here
to promote the ISI cause. They had supplied the city police with a confessional
statement given by ISI-suspect Baduddin Naseem, which listed the activities
of his accomplices.
Calcutta police officials said Naseem
had exposed Arman's and Liaquat's links with the ISI and giving details
on how they travelled to Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) for training in
arms and jihadi operations earlier this year.
Showcasing it as a major breakthrough
for the city police, detectives said Liaquat and Arman between themselves
had more than 40 cases of murder, extortion, dacoity and robbery ranged
against them in Bangladesh.
City police detective department
deputy commissioner Soumen Mitra said policemen had seized counterfeit
Indian currency and sophisticated arms from them during the rounding up.
Liaquat, Arman and the other seven
had crossed into India recently through the porous border in North 24-Parganas
and Malda, officials said. Liaquat and Arman told interrogators that one
Harish Ahmed of Mohammadpur Noorjahan Road in Dhaka, an ISI suspect, had
helped them obtain the passports and cross the border. All nine changed
their names after arriving in the city and the Bangladeshi passports they
had on them used their fake identities, officials said.
"Some of them were put up at their
local contacts' residences in Garia and in Ripon Street and Collins Lane
areas," one of them said. Liaquat and Arman were staying at a rented apartment
at Garia Gardens which a Calcutta contact had helped them obtain. Sleuths
are now monitoring the movement of the people who provided them with places
to stay.
Officials said those detained for
interrogation were Killer Abbas (a professional murderer from Pallabi),
Sada Sintu (from Gopalganj), Pitchy Hannan (from Tezgaon in Karanbazar),
Tanaj Mullah (from Madaripur in Purana Dhaka), Nannu (from Kathalbagan),
Kala Jahangir (of Mirpur) and Mantu (from Sutrapur). All of them are in
their 30s or early 40s.
