Year 2017: Agencies would be busy with IS recruits

The number of IS sympathisers or backers under watch today is 450. These are hardcore cases says an officer with the Intelligence Bureau.

New Delhi, Jan 2: The year 2017 will keep both the Intelligence Bureau and the National Investigation Agency busy chasing Islamic State operatives in India. The number of IS sympathisers or backers under watch today is 450. These are hardcore cases says an officer with the Intelligence Bureau.

All of them are under watch and we are confident that they will not be able to make their moves the officer also adds. The bigger problem for the agencies lies in the West Bengal area where the IS has tied up with the Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen, Bangladesh. According to the confession made by Musa, the man arrested for his alleged IS links, nearly 10,000 have pledged their support to the Islamic State in West Bengal and Bangladesh.

Year 2017 will be a busy year for the agencies:

There have been scores of arrests carried out by the NIA in 2016. All of them have confessed that they had planned on hitting a high value target. Fortunately none of them were successful. NIA officials explain that the IS related cases are very high on the radar and hence these persons are being tracked in the nick of time.

However the problem for us would be the coming together of the IS and the JMB, the NIA officer explains. Both have decided to come together and announce the Bengal Caliphate. The JMB would allow its turf to be used in West Bengal and Bangladesh while ideology would be that of the Islamic State's investigations have also revealed.

The 450 youth who are on the radar of the agencies are from different parts of the country. There are a good number of them from Southern India as well, the officer says. We have also come across cases in Maharashtra, West Bengal and even Madhya Pradesh, the IB official says.

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