HT Bureau
GUWAHATI, March 21: Assam Police’s Special Task Force (STF) inspector general Parthasarathi Mahanta on Thursday informed that the two dreaded ISIS cadres, who were apprehended on Wednesday, have already been handed over to the National Investigation Agency (NIA) for further legal action.
Mahanta said this while addressing a press conference where he shared the process which led to the arrest of ISIS India head from Assam.
Related Posts:
He informed that it was 15 days of meticulous analysis of intelligence inputs, scouting for local links, foolproof planning, raising a solid team and no-error execution that led to the arrest of ISIS India head from Assam.
The ISIS India head Haris Farooqi alias Harish Ajmal Farukhi and his associate Anurag Singh alias Rehan were arrested in Assam’s Dhubri district on Wednesday after they had crossed over from Bangladesh.
”We got information from a central agency around 15 days back that there could be possible movement of top-rung ISIS leaders in certain parts of Dhubri. The input was credible and so the STF was involved,” he added.
The STF then started working on probable areas of movement, trying to find local links if any and prepared a plan accordingly to arrest them, Mahanta said.
“By March 18, we narrowed down our focus and we got very specific information on March 19 on their likely movement. We immediately rushed to Dhubri’s Dharmasala. We saw two men walking on the road at around 4 am on March 20 looking for transportation to go to their destination,” he added.
The police already had the pictures of ISIS cadres and two of them matched with the men walking on the road, the IGP said.
“We arrested them and immediately brought them to Guwahati. We handed them over to the NIA last night itself. The NIA will take them to Delhi and other places, where scores of cases are registered against the duo,” he added.
Assam DGP G P Singh termed the arrest as an outcome of the inter-agency synergy in the national effort to counter violent terrorism in the country.
“Compliments to the team of officers involved in the operation,” he said in a post on X.
Without sharing details, Mahanta said interrogation of the two fundamental extremists are going on to find out their network, local contacts, funding source and information on explosives.
“There are two parts of the investigation. If anything is found related to Assam, it will be taken care of by us. For the rest of India developments, the NIA will look into it.
“Assam has always been vulnerable and we have been alert constantly. That is the reason we could arrest them immediately when they entered India from a neighbouring country,” Mahanta said.
Another senior official, who did not wish to be named, said both the ISIS cadres are wanted in the NIA case related to the Delhi module, covering incidents in Delhi, Mumbai and Lucknow.
“The last date of the stipulated period of filing the charge sheet in the Delhi module case is tomorrow and if they were not found, the NIA would have to declare them absconding and file the charge sheet accordingly. So, it is a big success for the security agencies,” he added.
Reacting to the development, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said in a post on X: “We shall continue our fight against the fundamentalist and eradicate terrorism from the soil of our nation under the leadership of the Honourable Prime Minister @narendramodi. Thank you, @assampolice.”
In a statement, Assam Police chief public relations officer Pranabjyoti Goswami on Wednesday had said that both of them are highly indoctrinated and motivated members of ISIS in India.
“They had furthered the cause of ISIS in India through conspiracies to carry out recruitment, terror funding and terror acts by means of IEDs at several places across India,” he had added.
Farooqi hails from Chakrata, Dehradun, while Singh is from Panipat and he converted to Islam. Singh’s wife is a Bangladeshi national. (With inputs from PTI)
