Author: Amitabh Srivastava
Publication: India Today
Date: December 9, 2011
URL: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/terror-cross-border-nepal-bihar-madhubani-indian-mujahideen/1/163528.html
Introduction: Bihar-Nepal border: Madhubani
emerges as a new recruiting centre and hideout for terrorists
Madhubani, a sleepy Bihar town bordering Nepal,
otherwise known for its exquisite saris and paintings, has emerged as a safe
passage for terrorists to tiptoe into Indian territory. Located 45 km from
Nepal, Madhubani district has also emerged as a new recruiting centre and
hideout for terrorists. Since 2006, police have picked up six terror agents
from Madhubani alone.
In a two-week operation between end-November
and early December, the Delhi Police picked up three more suspected Indian
Mujahideen (IM) operatives from here. They are allegedly part of a 13-member
IM module that planned and executed blasts in Pune's German Bakery in February
2010, Bangalore's Chinnaswamy Stadium in April 2010 and a shooting at the
Jama Masjid in September 2010. The module is said to be headed by Riyaz Bhatkal
and Iqbal Bhatkal, the two absconding brothers who founded IM. They masterminded
and executed these attacks with local supports.
Seventeen people were killed in the Pune bakery
blast while the blast outside the stadium in Bangalore left 15 injured. Two
Taiwanese tourists were injured in the firing at Jama Masjid on September
19, just before the Commonwealth Games were scheduled to begin in Delhi.
The district of Madhubani, with a population
of over 41 lakh, has earned the dubious sobriquet of 'another Azamgarh', after
the eastern Uttar Pradesh district which supplied at least 13 IM operatives
responsible for a number of terror attacks, including the 2008 serial blasts
in Delhi that left over two dozen dead.
On December 6, Delhi Police picked up Farooq
alias Nawab Alam alias Aftab Alam from Bihar's Purnea district, 140 km from
Madhubani, for alleged involvement in planting the bomb at the Chinnaswamy
Stadium. Farooq, whose small provision store was a front, is the seventh alleged
IM operative arrested by Delhi Police.
These arrests have followed in quick succession
in the aftermath of the arrest of Quateel Sidiqui, the first IM operative
Delhi Police picked from the Anand Vihar bus terminal in the capital on November
22.
On November 24, a Delhi Police team working
in tandem with Bihar Police arrested Ghayur Ahmed, a 21-year-old student and
religious preacher, and a Pakistani national Mohammad Azmal alias Shoaib,
28, from separate localities in Madhubani. The arrest of Ghayur, who hails
from a poor but respectable family in Pachchiya Tola, Sakri, from the district,
has angered local Muslims who consider him innocent. Azmal had posed as a
woollen cloth seller and had rented a room in the Signia chowk, 15 km from
Sakri, in September this year. He became conspicuous with his presence within
two months of taking up the room. "He would stay out of the house for
the entire day, returning only in the night. We hardly met him," says
Mohammad Nasir, his harried landlord who claims his aged mother had rented
out the room in good faith. "Sometimes, strangers also visited him. The
only time he spoke to neighbours was when he sacrificed a goat on Id-ul-Azha."
Azmal and Ghayur are among the six suspected
IM operatives who have been remanded to 10 days' Delhi Police custody on December
5. They have been accused of executing various terror attacks, including in
Pune and Bangalore and the Jama Masjid shooting. Although Delhi Police officers
tracking the IM trail refused to talk about their seizures, INDIA TODAY has
learnt that five Indian and Nepalese SIM cards and three mobile phones were
recovered from Azmal's possession, besides $635 that he had kept hidden in
his bedroll.
While the police claimed to have found "clinching"
evidence from his phone records, the recovered items are incongruous with
Azmal's professed profile. According to police inputs, Azmal is the father
of three children from an Indian woman he married from Lalganj locality in
the district. The police add that Azmal was cooling off in Madhubani after
carrying out a series of terror attacks and had taken the room on rent so
that his family didn't know what he was up to. Unlike Ghayur, who walked in
to the police when called, Azmal used various ruses to get off the hook. "He
said he was an Indian from Jaipur. But the Delhi team had evidence against
him," says a senior police officer.
Delhi Police executed the entire operation
and their Bihar counterparts had only a limited role of providing back-up
during the raids. A senior IPS officer in Bihar says he did not understand
why Delhi Police decided against questioning Azmal's Indian in-laws.
Why did Madhubani district become a terrorist
haunt? A senior police officer in Darbhanga concedes the police in the region
have been sleeping on their job, especially since there is very little extremism
that goes on within the district. "It is a perfect hideout. You can stay
here unnoticed for long," he says.
The proximity to Nepal is another factor for
the district's terror link. While most of Bihar's 625 km border with Nepal
is porous, Madhubani's is even more so because of the district's longstanding
cultural links with the neighbouring country. "Both the Hindu and Muslim
communities have crossborder marital relations. Even property is shared,"
says a senior police officer. Worse, nobody checks credentials of people coming
in from Nepal.
This gives cross-border terrorists a safe
route to infiltrate India. "India can always procure details of visiting
Pakistanis from Nepal and crosscheck if anyone of them are sneaking in without
proper documentation. The level of border coordination between Bihar and Nepal
authorities leaves a lot to be desired," says a senior IPS officer. The
recent arrest of a Pakistani national drives home the point. On November 30,
Hamid-ul-Rahman was arrested from the Madhubani court premises after sneaking
in illegally from Nepal to meet his son Mukhtar, in judicial custody for travelling
to India on a fake passport last year.
The IM arrests have bolstered the anti-terror
offensive. But the terror jigsaw is incomplete. Ghayur could have escaped
had he wanted to. His father, Mohammad Nasarullah Jamal, a homeopathy practitioner
in Sakri, knew the police were on the lookout for his son for more than a
week. On November 24, Jamal called in his son from the neighbourhood, saying
the police were waiting. Ghayur walked into a police jeep parked in front
of his house in Pachhiya Tola locality.
His parents insist Ghayur, who was studying
for an MA from the Ahmedia Shefia Madrasa in Darbhanga, never travelled beyond
Madhubani and Darbhanga districts. It opens up the possibility that at least
some of the IM operatives must have been frequenting the Darbhanga madarsa.
Police operations in north Bihar have also left many unanswered questions.
For one, why didn't the police search Ghayur's house? The breakthroughs are
reassuring at one level. But they also raise an uncomfortable question: how
many terrorists have sneaked into Indian territory through the porous Nepal
border.
