4 Bangladeshi terrorists arrested in MP: A ticking time bomb called illegal immigration

New Delhi, Mar 14: Security agencies have very often flagged illegal immigration as one of the biggest security threats the country is facing. The arrest of four Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh operatives from Madhya Pradesh only goes on to show how deeply infested this problem is.

Four terrorists of the JMB, s Fazhar Ali alias Mehmood (32), Mohammad Aqeel alias Ahmed (24), Zahooruddin alias Ibrahim (28) and Fazhar Zainul Abdeen alias Akram Al Hasan (25) were arrested by the MP police. In a statement the police said that they were involved in the Bodhgaya blasts.

The police said that these persons were arrested from a building located near the Fatima Mosque in Bhopal. "These terrorists were living as tenants in Bhopal and they were making a team of a remote-based sleeper cell to execute their terrorist activities. On the basis of inputs, a search operation was carried out and four Bangladeshi nationals have been arrested," the police said.

In recent times there have been several arrests of illegal immigrants from Bangladesh who have entered the country through West Bengal.

Back in 2012, the Intelligence Bureau had reported that the issue was catching up like wildfire in the states of West Bengal, Kerala, Telangana (then AP) and Karnataka. The report stated that there are all sorts of people. Many are here in search of a livelihood, but then there are many who indulge in illegal activities such as smuggling as drugs and sometimes arms.

They come into the country through West Bengal and gradually move into other parts of the country. While touts and middlemen help them with documents, there are others who take advantage of their poor living conditions and lure them with money in order to carry out illegal activities.

In this context, we must take a look at what former Pakistan prime minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had said in his book. He had said, "it would be wrong to think that Kashmir is the only dispute that divides India and Pakistan, though undoubtedly the most significant.

One at least is nearly as important as the Kashmir dispute, that of Assam and some districts of India adjacent to East Pakistan. To these Pakistan has very good claims."

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in his book, Eastern Pakistan: Its Population and Economics, said, "because Eastern Pakistan must have sufficient land for its expansion and because Assam has abundant forests and mineral resources, coal, petroleum etc., Eastern Pakistan must include Assam to be financially and economically strong".

A former officer with the Research and Analysis Wing, Amar Bhushan tells that this is a dangerous issue. He says that in the early 1990s, the Research and Analysis Wing carried out a daredevil operation in Bangladesh against the activities of the Jamaat-e-Islami. The intention behind the operation was a larger one and India was clearly worried about the rise of illegal immigration which the Jamaat was carrying out at the behest of the ISI.

The agenda was a larger one and after losing out on Bangladesh, the ISI wanted to infiltrate as many Muslims as possible in a bid to either merge a portion of India with Bangladesh or divide the nation.

Bhushan who has written about this mission in his latest book- The Zero Cost Mission/The Wily Agent says that they were alarmed by the spurt in illegal immigration into India.

Militancy was not exactly the problem and the Jamaat was not too big an outfit back then. The problem was that they were helping the ISI's larger design of increasing illegal immigration into India, Bhushan tells OneIndia.

The illegal immigration that takes place assumes worrying propositions. An intelligence file clearly suggests that illegal immigration from Bangladesh are part of a devious agenda to set up a Greater East Pakistan/Bangladesh.