BHOPAL: Four men arrested in Bhopal a few days ago over suspicion of building local sleeper cells of banned terror outfit Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) were eyeing to build an army of highly radicalised youths, who would have executed their destructive plans.
The four men, all school dropouts hailing from Tangail and Chandpur districts of Bangladesh, were eyeing to recruit students and youngsters. Holed up in a rented room in a multi-storied house in Aishbagh area of the city for three months, they were in contact with some youths from Teela Jamalpura, Nishatpura and Karond areas of Bhopal as well as youngsters from adjoining Vidisha and Raisen districts.
According to sources privy to the investigation, the four men, who are in 14-day police custody till March 28, had held over a dozen secret meetings with these youths, some of whom have been picked by Madhya Pradesh ATS for questioning.
After some local publishers didn’t cooperate with the quartet in publishing their extremist Islamic literature, the Bangladeshis started printing the literature and binding them into small books in their room only. They were living without any registered rent agreement and police verification.
“We are questioning every possible person they met during these three months to know how large their contact base was. We are also sending teams to west UP’s Saharanpur district to track those who helped them in getting fabricated Indian voter IDs and PAN cards,” a senior police officer associated with the probe told TMS.
The grilling of the four men has revealed they hail from humble backgrounds and were brainwashed to follow extremist ideology at seminaries in Dhaka, before being sent into India via Tripura and Meghalaya border two years back. Before Bhopal, they spent a long time in Assam, Bengal and Saharanpur-Deoband in UP to further their subversive plans.