Assam STF busts terror module, arrests eight

In a nation-wide operation, the Assam Police Special Task Force (STF), in coordination with the Kerala and West Bengal Police, has arrested eight 'fundamentalists', unearthing a terror module, which was preparing to strike. The operation was taken against a known jihadi global terrorist organisation by the STF.

During meetings, the terrorists had devised plans to assassinate prominent religious and Hindu leaders.

Special DGP of Assam Police Harmeet Singh on Thursday said that several meetings were organised in West Bengal's Murshidabad and Falakata where participants, including Nur Islam Mandal and his associates, deliberated extensively on targeting members of the RSS and other Hindu organisations.


The motive behind these actions was to incite religious tensions and disturbances, aiming to disrupt communal harmony and destabilise the region, Singh said. Police said the operation 'Praghat' was launched after a detailed and prolonged examination of intelligence inputs regarding the clandestine anti-national activities being carried out by a group of individuals under the direction of one Mohd Farhan Israk, a close associate of Jasimuddin Rahmani, chief of Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT), an affiliate of al-Qaeda in the Indian subcontinent. A Bangladeshi national, Mohd Sad Radi alias Mohd Shab Sheikh, was sent to India in November 2024 to spread their nefarious ideology and create sleeper-cells amongst like-minded individuals across India, to initiate violent and subversive actions. Radi visited Assam and West Bengal to meet sleeper-cell activists of the banned ABT, before he moved to Kerala for the same purpose.

Teams were dispatched to various parts of the country for identifying the jihadi elements, to apprehend them.

During the intervening night of December 17-18, 2024, the teams simultaneously conducted search and seizure operations at the specified and identified locations in Kerala, West Bengal and Assam. The accused were apprehended and arrested along with a huge amount of incriminating documents and articles.