GUWAHATI: An NIA team on Tuesday raided the the house of Sahanur Alam, who is wanted by the agency in connection with the October 2 blast in West Bengal’s Burdwan district. In fact, it was for the third time in less than a fortnight that the house at Chatala village in Assam’s Barpeta district was searched by the sleuths.
Even though the NIA officials remained tight-lipped on the details of the raid, Sahanur’s father and his youngest brother were believed to have been quizzed by the investigators.
The NIA also summoned the Chatala village chief and asked him to submit a list of the names of those, who had disappeared from the village in recent times.
Following the search on Tuesday, the NIA officials scoured the two bank accounts of Sahanur, who is on the run and believed to be hiding either in Meghalaya or South India. His wife, Susena Begum alias Sajina Begum, was arrested by the police on the city outskirts last week.
According to police, several youth from Chatala and the neighbouring villages had gone underground, in the wake of the arrest of six people from the district in connection with the blast case. During an earlier search, some incriminating items, including CDs were recovered. The CDs contained motivational songs of jihad and visuals of jihadi training. The investigators found that the couple had links with Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), following the statement given by one Saiful Islam, who was among the eight arrested in Assam in connection with the blast case.
“The JMB has been trying to spread its tentacles to some key areas of Assam. However, the indoctrination of youths in jihadi philosophy is at a nascent stage,” Additional Director General of Police(ADGP) Pallab Bhattacharya told Express.
Sajina is learnt to have been in constant touch with the JMB operatives through emails. She underwent motivational training in jihad at the Simulia madrasa.