Jehad plans foiled; ISI network busted in state

GUWAHATI, August 8: The Assam police achieved a major breakthrough in busting the network of the Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in the state and nabbed 31 persons including two ISI officers, two agents of the agency and 27 militants belonging to different Islamic militant outfits. The arrests also exposed the plan of ISI to convert Assam into a separate Islamic country. The chief minister, Prafulla Kumar Mahanta, said the Assam police yesterday arrested four persons - Mohammad Fasih Ullah Hussaini alias Hamid Mehmood, alias Khalid Mehmood of Hyderabad, Sind of Pakistan, Mohammad Javed Wakhar alias Mohammad Musaffa alias Mohammad Mehraj alias Abdul Rahman of Karachi, Pakistan, Maulana Hafiz Mohammad Akram Mallik, alias Musaffar Hussain alias Atabulla alias Bhaijan alias Abdul Awal of Mukam Shahwali village of Jammu and Kashmir and Wari Salim Ahmed alias Abdul Aziz alias Sadat of Mehilki village of Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh. He said they were moving in Assam under suspicious circumstances and after keeping them under surveillance for some days, the police arrested them yesterday on charges of waging war against the nation and booked them under Sections 121, 121(A), 153(A) of the IPC, Section 14 of the Foreigners Act and Section 10/13 of the UAP Act. During interrogation, the arrested persons confessed that they were sent to Assam by ISI to carry out certain specific operations in Assam and other parts of the country. Fasih Ullah Hussaini and Javed Wakhar are officers of ISI while the other two are functionaries of the terrorist group Harkat-ul-Mujahideen. These persons arrived at Dhaka from Karachi by Pakistan International Airlines flights on different days in the third week of July and met ISI officials based in Dhaka to arrange for despatch of a consignment of explosives to Assam. They then crossed over to Assam through Karimganj. Mahanta said of the explosives consignment, one portion was to be handed over to a local contact man for use by the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) and the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen. One of the major tasks assigned to them by ISI was to trigger off blasts in the Manali-Leh highway to cut off the supply lines of the Indian Army. During interrogation, it came to light that the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen recruited a number of persons from Assam and the Assam police has managed to arrest a number of them including the chief organiser of the outfit in the state. The Naib Amir of the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen in India, Maulana Md Fakiruddin alias Akram Master hails from Goalpara district and is now in Pakistan. After the interrogation of the arrested persons, the designs of ISI in Assam also came to light. These include training a large number of Muslim youths from Assam and launch a holy war (jehad) to liberate Assam and establish an Islamic country consisting of Assam and certain other parts of the Northeast, to make use of the ULFA and certain other militant outfits of the area for creating largescale disturbances in Assam including bomb blasts in railway stations, public places, market places, railway tracks; making use of the ULFA to destroy public property like oil installations; launching a two pronged economic warfare by shipping away money collected by underground elements of Assam to Pakistan and by pumping in large number of fake currency notes and to foment communal trouble in the State by inciting innocent and law abiding Muslim citizens. Meanwhile, the director-general of Assam police, PV Sumant, told newspersons that during the interrogations, the arrested ISI agents revealed that a number of militants from Assam had received training in Pakistan at the behest of ISI. They include 200 ULFA cadres, 30 Harkat-ul-Mujahideen activists, about 30 to 40 Laskar-e-Toiba activists, about 30 to 35 from the Harkat-ul-Jehad. He said following the interrogation of the arrested ISI agents, the police managed to arrest 27 other Islamic militants and 16 of them were trained in Pakistan. He revealed that 12 were arrested in Dhubri district, one in Guwahati, one in Nalbari, four in Barpeta, seven on Goalpara and two in Karimganj. He said that the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen had placed the services of 400 activists at the disposal of the Pakistani Army during the Kargil war and some of them were from the state. Describing the arrest of the ISI agents as a "major catch", the DGP said ULFA was now working at the dictates of ISI. The IGP (special branch), N Ramachandran, said the police recovered an identity card from Javed Wakhar that was issued just before he was sent to Assam. He said a notebook recovered from the ISI agents revealed 24 different frequencies of communication used by ISI. The police also showed a video recording of the interrogation of the ISI men. Md Fasih Ullah Hussaini said their mission in Assam was to pave the way for the creation of an independent Islamic country. He revealed the links between ULFA and ISI and said several top leaders of ULFA visited Pakistan and ISI had provided them with passports and weapons. Maulana Hafiz Md Akram Mallik also repeated the same statements and said they were supposed to arrange for a consignment of explosives for the ULFA. The DGP said some other important documents were also recovered but the same were not displayed for the sake of further investigations. He said ISI agents were also wanted by some other security agencies of the country.