Terror network: Bangladesh-West Bengal-Hyderabad link comes to fore
Hyderabad: The arrest of 28-year-old Khalid Ahmed, a Burmese national, in the old city area of Hyderabad on 18 November has added a new dimension to the city's terror links. While Hyderabad's connection with Pakistan-based outfits is no secret, what has come as a surprise to the intelligence agencies is the city's terror links to Bangladesh and Myanmar for well over a decade. This has also renewed concerns over the illegal immigrants in the city.
Tracing the terror links to Bangladesh, Additional Commissioner of City Police Anjani Kumar said: "The first ever human bomb, outside Jammu and Kashmir and after the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in 1991, was the attack on Special Task Force office at Begumpet in Hyderabad on 12 October \2005. This was carried out by Dalin, a Bangladeshi national, in which one constable was also killed."
Another major incident he recalled was the Dilsukhnagar blasts on 21 February 2013. The principal accused, Yasin Bhatkal and Riyaz Bhatkal, of Bhatkal village on the Karnakata-Maharashtra border had maintained a strong Hyderabad-Bangladesh-Pakistan connection.
"They not only used Indian Mujahideen for their work, but they also depended on sleeper cells who were working on behalf of the ISI through logistic support from teams entering India through Bangladesh," said Additional Commissioner of Police. He also said that they had "strong contact" with Ameer Raza Khan, who was rated "very high" in his links with the ISI.
Referring to the Tuesday's arrest of the Burmese national Khalid Mohammed, the Inspector-General of Police of National Investigation Agency (NIA) Ravishankar Ayyanar said that several member of the Rohingya Solidarity Organisation were trained by Tehreek-e-Taliban for executing terror strikes against Buddhists in Myanmar and Bangladesh.
Several thousands of them were suspected to have migrated through West Bengal into Hyderabad.
Khalid Mohammed is suspected to be an expert in making explosives, improvised explosive devices and reportedly organised terror camps on the Myanmar-Bangladesh border.
The NIA officials recovered "incriminating videos of training materials, literature relating to poisons, IED making, bomb making, explosives and Jihadist literature including that of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS)" from Khalid Mohammed.
Khalid was born and brought up in Maungdaw city of Burma. He migrated to Hyderabad a year ago along with his mother and began living in Royal Colony where Rohingya Muslim refugees also live. His father Khaleemullah is a construction worker in Jeddah for the last one decade.
He taught at children for several months in Balapur area. His sister Khaleda Parveen was married to Bangladeshi national, though his mother, Hameeda, said that they could never visit Bangladesh owing to security reasons. However, Khaleda Parveen used to visit them in Hyderabad. He was married a couple of years ago and has a year-old child.
Khalid reportedly admitted to having been trained by Tehreek-e-Azadi-Arakan which has drawn the trainers from Tehreek-e-Taliban, Pakistan.
The NIA has identified that Khalid was staying in Hyderabad faking his identity and did not have valid documents to prove his nationality or legitimacy of stay. The agency feels that a network was forming in West Bengal where jihadists, who were working against Bangladesh and Myanmar, and Khalid was a "vital link between terror organisations in Bangladesh and Myanmar working from West Bengal and also other parts of India.
The 2 October explosion in Burdwan district of West Bengal blew the lid off and exposed the terror links of Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen of Bangladesh with their outfits in West Bengal and Hyderabad.
The terror link with the bank robbery at Choppadandi in Karimnagar district of Telangana and the subsequent purchase of lands with the stolen cash in Hyderabad and Tirupati by the "robbers" was exposed after the Burdhwan explosion on 2 October.
The NIA is silently working to straighten the maze of terror links, even as Hyderabad is sitting on a powder keg.
A ballpark figure of Bangladeshi families overstaying in Hyderabad is put at 10,000, while the approximate number of Burmese families in the city would be anything around 5,000, according to knowledgeable sources. While the legality of migration needs to be checked, political pressure comes as a stumbling block in the process. For, the immigrants would have settled down for years together and they would have obtained voter ID, Aadhaar Card, ration card, etc to reinforce their claim to the benefits offered to any other citizen in the city.
Comments