Author: Times News Network
Publication: The Times of India
Date: July 13, 2006
URL: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1742892.cms
[Note from Hindu Vivek Kendra: The biggest
supporters of the Bagladeshi infiltrators are the Congress and Nationalist
Congress party members - both elected and unelected. They are both Hindus
and Muslims, and have enabled these infiltrators to occupy government and
private land forcibly and illegally. And despite court orders to evict them,
the government is not willing to take any action. Of course, the secularists
indirectly support these illegal immigrants by using all sorts of specious
arguments why they should not be evicted. Furthermore, this infiltration is
nothing new. For example, the late Sunil Dutt had physically prevented demolition
of the illegal occupation of Railway land at Bandra by these infiltrators
by standing in front of the bulldozers that had come to fulfill and order
by the judiciary. And all this is something that the media finds it most convenient
to hide under the carpet.]
While investigators probing leads into the
Mumbai train blasts are scouring for evidence linking the terror strike to
groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba, there is rising concern over a large of pool
of illegals from Bangladesh in the city providing a steady stream of foot
soldiers for extremist outfits.
The burgeoning population of illegals is seen
to be a security issue as within the thousands who pour into cities like Mumbai
every year looking for a livelihood, is a small but extremely dangerous minority.
It is this sub-group, prey to fundamentalist
leanings, which is often involved in providing hideouts and local support
in terror plots.
The Bangladesh factor has increasingly figured
on the radar of agencies tracking terrorism. The March 7 temple explosions
in Varanasi led investigators to Bangladesh where a cadre of the banned SIMI
were provided training to carry out the outrages by Harkat-ul-Jihad-i-Islami
(HUJI).
SIMI's links with Islami Chatra Shibir, the
student wing of Jamaat-i-Islami, have also provided evidence of organic links
that terror outfits operating in India have with supporters of extremism in
Bangladesh.
HUJI and its affiliates run camps in Bangladesh
with the support of Pakistan and the indulgence of the Khaleda Zia government
of which the Jamaat is a partner.
Indian agencies are not very hopeful of Bangladesh
increasing pressure on fundamentalists as national elections are approaching.
Even though Zia has been asking Jamaat to
keep a low profile and not attract international attention, the party has
not obliged. Support to anti-India activities continues unabated, even if
a little more unobtrusively.
The coordinated nationwide 400 bomb blasts
that were staged in Bangladesh in August 2005 were seen to be the handiwork
of the Ahle Hadith-related Jamatul Mujahideen.
It is clear that outfits operating out of
Bangladesh have the wherewithal to assemble and explode fairly sophisticated
bombs. This is what worries Indian agencies when it comes to monitoring the
population of illegals in big cities like Mumbai.
Mumbai police, like its counterparts in other
Indian metros, has not always found it easy to raid areas where suspected
terrorists or their supporters have sought shelter. Invariably, these populations
receive political patronage and local leaders have often thwarted action by
police.
With government's sensitive to the decisive
role such population clusters can play in elections, policing has become a
challenge.
The infiltration of extremists and their success
in provoking violence was recently seen in Bhiwandi where a mob lynched two
cops. What was seen as "retaliatory" violence to a previous incident
of police firing had definite criminal underpinnings.
The illegals often drift into criminal associations
where they are used as foot soldiers by organisations dealing in terror.
