Jalaluddin's 3 accomplices to be handed over to UP police

By Staff
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Google Oneindia News

Kolkata, June 25 (UNI) Three accomplices of Jalaluddin, the area commander of Bangladesh-based militant outfit Harkat-ul-Jehad al-Islami (HuJI), will be handed over to the Uttar Pradesh police shortly as the West Bengal Government has started a probe to ascertain whether the terror group is active in the state.

''Preparations are on for handing over three of the four arrested people to Uttar Pradesh police. The other person will be kept here,'' Home Secretary Prasad Ranjan Ray said today.

Before handing them over to the UP police, an inquiry would be made to know whether the three were involved in any activities in West Bengal, Mr Ray said.

The CID of West Bengal police arrested the four HuJI activists --Sheikh Moktar, Ghulam Mortaza, Md Akbar and Azizur-- from Kolkata, North Twentyfour Parganas and East Midnapore districts on Sunday last following interrogation of Jalaluddin, alias Babu, who was nabbed by a special task force of UP police the previous day.

Jalaluddin is the prime suspect in the abduction of Khadim shoes Director Partha Pratim Roy Burman that took place in 2001 and the blasts in the Shramajeevi Expres and the Sankotmochan temple in Varanasi.

All the arrested, including Jalaluddin, are residents of West Bengal.

As an apprehension was raised about the possibility of HuJI having a well-knit clandestine network in West Bengal, the Home Secretary said the Government was inquiring into it. However, there had been no such reports so far, he said.

Mr Ray said of the four arrested only one had his base in Kolkata for carrying on his activities, while the others were active in other states.

However, intelligence sources said the arrest of Jalaluddin in Lucknow and the subsequent nabbing of four others in West Bengal pointed to the possibility of the outfit being active in the state, making it a transit point for executing their designs elsewhere in the country.

According to CID, Sheikh Mokhtar, a close friend of Jalaluddin, was also a HuJI commander, who used to control the outfit's clandestine activities in West Bengal.

'' A resident of Nandigram in East Midnapore district, Mokhtar maintained a facade of a tailor. But he underwent training in arms and explosives in Pakistan three years ago after being recruited by HuJI. On the other hand, Akbar, a resident of North Twentyfour Parganas district, also had arms training in Pakistan and was responsible for escorting HuJI members from across the border, '' the sources said.

The CID sleuths suspected that Akbar had helped Sheikh Bilal, the prime accused in the recent blast in a mosque in Hyderabad.

Hailing from Basirhat in North Twentyfour Parganas, Azizur was suspected to be responsible for controlling the flow of HuJI funds and smuggling of RDX from across the international border, while Mortaza was also an expert in arms and explosives, the sources said.

They said it was through Jalaluddin that several youths of the state were baptised in terrorism to help spread the HuJI network in the country.

As all the four had been remanded by a court to police custody, CID officials said interroration was continuing to extract more information from them.

UNI

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