Author: Pramod Kumar Singh
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: September 9, 2005
A Bangladeshi accused of engineering the 400
serial explosions that rocked Dhaka and other towns across Bangladesh on August
17 has an Indian voter ID card, a house in West Bengal where his name is included
in the electoral roll and is an activist of the Communist Party of India (Marxist).
His family lives in Sonaberia town in Chittagong district of Bangladesh, a
hotbed of jihadi activity.
Gayasuddin, one of the blast accused who was
arrested by the police from Kadamtala in Satkhira region of Bangladesh on
August 29, used to frequently cross the border into West Bengal where he has
a house in Nityanand Khunti village of North 24 Parganas district.
According to intelligence operatives, he was
last seen in Nityanand Khunti on August 26 but slipped out after villagers
informed security agencies that he had come to seek refuge. The sources said
that whenever Gayasuddin visited the village, he used to spend his nights
at the village mosque.
After dropping out of Sonaberia High School,
Gayasuddin studied theology in a madarsa in the same town where he later became
a qari. His wife and children continue to live in Sonaberia.
Believed to be an active supporter of the
CPI(M), he used his West Bengal contacts to get a ration card despite his
Bangladeshi nationality. His brothers Alauddin, Naseeruddin and Abu Hussain,
who live in Nityanand Khnuti village, are also believed to be activists of
the CPI(M).
Gayasuddin was deeply involved with facilitating
illegal immigration by Bangladeshis into West Bengal through Malda, Siliguri,
Murshidabad and Dinajpur. West Bengal shares a 2,216 km-long porous border
with Bangladesh.
Intelligence sources said that whenever Border
Security Force (BSF) personnel enter a village along the border to identify
illegal immigrants, aliens like Gayasuddin use loudspeakers installed in local
mosques to raise an alarm by shouting "daakaat, daakaat" (dacoits,
dacoits). With hordes of armed villagers streaming out of their homes, the
BSF men are forced to beat a hasty retreat.
The unending influx of Bangladeshis into West
Bengal has led to an alarming increase in criminal and subversive activities.
Statistics show that there has been a 20 per cent increase in crimes ranging
from rape to dacoity.
Illegal immigration from Bangladesh resulting
in lakhs of aliens settling down in West Bengal, getting hold of ration cards
and including their names in the electoral roll has had a political fallout.
Analysis done by intelligence agencies shows that Bangladeshi immigrants can
swing results in 52 Assembly constituencies and have a sizeable influence
in 100 others in West Bengal.
