KOLKATA:In a major breakthrough in the Burdwan terror blast investigations, the NIA arrested Mofazzal Alam alias “Laden” from a village on the Indo-Bangladesh border in West Bengal.
Alam, who had fled from Mekimnagar in Lalgola sub-division of Murshidabad district after the blast at the house of Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh terrorist on October 2, used to run a large madrasa where youths, including women were indoctrinated in “jehadi philosophy” and imparted training in arms and manufacturing explosives. As he used to look and dress like slain al-Qaeda chief Osama-bin-Laden the local villagers began to address him as “Laden”.
Last year, immediately after the blast at Khagragarh in Burdwan district during Durga Puja, he said he used to run brick kilns in adjoining Nadia district, which also had borders with Bangladesh, but they stopped functioning. Then he took up a job as mason. However, since he received funds from a “dentist” in Barpeta in Assam he started the madrasa to educate young Muslim women. Laden’s attempts to “empower” poor Muslim women in the residential madrasa became popular among the villagers, who were ignorant about it being a terror training camp.
The man, who actually funded Laden, turned out to be Shahnoor Alam, the quack who was also arrested by the NIA in December from Larkuchi village in Assam, while his wife Suzina was earlier nabbed by the Assam Police from a bus terminus in Guwahati. Laden is said to have had bank accounts abroad and harboured top JuMB terrorists, some of whom have been arrested at his madrasa spread over a large tract of land.