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Madrasa started by 2 terror suspects in Assam’s Barpeta demolished: Police
Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said this was the second madrasa evicted by the authorities as they were running a terrorist hub, not an institution.
GUWAHATI: Authorities in Barpeta district of Assam on Monday demolished a madrasa after accusations that the premises was used for terror activities, a senior district police officer said.
The madrasa located at Dhakaliapara was razed following the arrest of two brothers, Akbar Ali and Abul Kalam Azad on charges of links with Al Qaida in Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) and Bangladesh-based terror outfit Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT).
AQIS was formed by global al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri in September 2014. Zawahiri was killed in a US drone attack in Afghanistan on July 31.
This was the second instance of a madrasa being demolished in Assam this month, the first was on August 4 in Assam’s Morigaon district.
“We arrested the two brothers on Saturday. They were produced in court on Sunday and have been remanded in police custody for 10 days,” Barpeta superintendent of police Amitava Sinha said.
Sinha added that the two brothers were alleged to be responsible for providing logistical support and shelter to two ABT operatives from Bangladesh. One of the two is missing; the other, Mohammed Suman, was arrested in March as part of the state’s crackdown on terrorists.
A resident of Narayanganj district in Bangladesh, Suman entered India illegally through West Bengal in 2016, married a girl and settled in Barpeta in 2018.
According to police, he was working as an Arabic teacher at a local madrasa and a preacher at a mosque in Barpeta’s Dhakalipara area. Suman was allegedly indoctrinating Muslim youth to recruit them in jihadi outfits and create a base for Al Qaida.
“Following Suman’s arrest, the two brothers, who started the private madrasa, in which the Bangladeshi was working as a teacher, fled. We nabbed them on Saturday,” said Sinha
“The madrasa was demolished on Monday as it had been constructed illegally without the required permission on government land and was operating as a place for jihadi activities,” he added.
Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma later said this was the second madrasa evicted by the authorities as they were running a terrorist hub, not an institution. “I don’t want to generalise, but we investigate and take appropriate action when a complaint of fundamentalism comes,” Sarma reiterated on Monday, according to news agency ANI.
Earlier this month, Sarma said the state has become a hotbed of Islamic fundamentalism and the security forces have busted “five jihadi modules with links to Al Qaida-affiliated terror outfits in Bangladesh” since March.
“Interestingly, the hub of all these activities, as of now, appears to be ‘madrasas’. I am not generalizing, but whoever has been arrested till date have had some connection with ‘madrasas’ or were acting as preachers in some mosque,” Sarma had said.
“These people were working as preachers in mosques as a cover. Their aim was to wage jihad against India and establish ‘shariat’ law. Several training camps were organized by these people especially during the Covid pandemic. They were trained in tradecraft (techniques/technology used in modern espionage), radicalisation, indoctrination, gun training and bomb making,” Sarma added.
