Kolkata, Jan 2: A labourer, a couple of passport agents, a college student and a bartender were among several people arrested in West Bengal in 2015 for alleged links with ISI, putting the state under the scanner of security agencies as a “secure hideout” for agents of the Pakistani agency.
Fake passports, fake voter identity cards, Aadhar cards, ration cards procured from agents allegedly employed by the ISI helped these intruders getting into the country and settling here, Kolkata Police officials said.
The state’s porous international borders with Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan helped the agents to infiltrate into the country through the West Bengal, they said.
“While probing the Khagragarh blast (in Burdwan), several documents and clues indicated that those involved in the incident came from across the border of Bangladesh and they got support from locals.
“Though investigation is still on, we suspect that either they were local (agents) or the people who have settled here within a decade’s time,” a senior CID officer said.
The arrest of a bartender in early November from central part of the city revealed that a network of ISI agents were working in the state, he said.
“We have information that there are specific roles given to each of these agents by the ISI. Some are here to recruit agents, some others are for collecting information from areas where either the Navy, Army or the Air Force have their base.
“Apart from them, there are those who are here to bring in high quality fake Indian currency notes in the country and spread them here aiming to devastate the economy,” a top IPS officer of Kolkata Police said.
Banned organisations like the Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) has spread its network in Howrah, and both North and South 24-Parganas districts, he added.
“They have set up organisational bases in districts like Murshidabad, Nadia, Burdwan and Birbhum and we are probing whether they have spread into other states like Assam, Tripura, Meghalaya etc,” the officer said.
The National Investigation Agency (NIA) during its probe into the blast in Khagragarh last year has learnt that the Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) had tried to spread its network to Howrah, the two 24-Parganas and Hooghly.
NIA also claimed that the JMB was trying to topple the Bangladesh government by establishing Sharia Law there besides spreading its tentacles in India.
The NIA has filed its second supplementary charge sheet in connection with the blast against accused Nurul Hoque Mondal alias Naeem and 27 others for waging war against Bangladesh.
Akhtar’s grilling led to the arrest of his brother Jaffar and documents, recovered from their residence in the metropolis, showed their “deep-rooted” links with the ISI.
“They trained him (Akhtar) in code management. His brother Jaffar also travelled to Pakistan along with Akhtar in 1980s, the officer said.
A senior STF officer said that they had used Facebook, WhatsApp, email to communicate with ISI.
“Fake Facebook accounts and email accounts have been used for communicating with their ISI bosses in Pakistan by these agents. We have found that they use female names to open up accounts for correspondence,” he said.
“They pass on information electronically and also through other means which could be manual. There can be others involved who acted as messengers,” he added.
Following questioning of Akhtar and Jaffar, Kolkata Police-STF unit arrested contract labourer with Garden Reach Shipbuilders & Engineers Limited (GRSE) along with his son Asfaq and brother-in-law Mohammed Jahangir as suspected ISI agents.
Grilling Mohammed Jahangir, police arrested 59-year-old passport agent Sheikh Badal for his alleged links with the ISI.
“The network has spread to other parts of the country also…There can be more people involved who work in a chain system. There are several more people around and we are trying to locate them,” the officer said.
“Actually these are small fries we are trying to grab the big fishes involved in the network…With the arrest of these agents avenues have opened up to reach to them,” the officer stated.
