Arrested LeT man is old hand,has done 5 yrs in Tihar

Shafiqul (32),a Bangladeshi whose job was allegedly to recruit youths into the terror outfit,was picked up from the Malda house of Haji Akhtar Hussain,a former driver in the Army who later quit the force to start his own business.

The CID sleuths swooped down on Hussain’s house at Harishchandrapur in Malda when Shafiqul was there to attend the wedding function of Hussain’s daughter.

The next day,the CID questioned the retired serviceman,said to be a former Naik in the Indian Army,before arresting him in the evening.

During the questioning,Hussain said he had met Shafiqul only on Sunday last at Harischandrapur railway station,and found him penniless. Taking pity on him,Hussain said he took Shafiqul to his residence.

“Shafiqul told us he had known Hussain for six years and had even taken him to Dhaka in June 2007 to meet his handler,who would complete his recruitment as an ISI agent. Shafiqul had given him Rs 15,000 on an earlier occasion and tried to use Hussain to set up a base in Siliguri,” DIG (Operations) Siddhinath Gupta said.

Shafiqul is suspected of facilitating movement of LeT terrorists across the Indo-Bangla border as well as recruiting youth from north Bengal and neighbouring states,including Tripura,into the terror outfit.

In 1997,the police said,he crossed the border four times to smuggle 20 kg of RDX into the country. He was arrested in 1998 and following his conviction,he was incarcerated in Tihar Jail in Delhi for five years.

“In 2003,Shafiqul signed a confessional statement in which he gave details about his network. Following this,he was released from jail and pushed back in Bangladesh,but he returned at the instruction of his handlers in Dhaka. He hails from Rajshahi in Bangladesh,and crossed the border in Murshidabad before reaching Malda,” Gupta added.

Till now,Shafiqul has admitted to facilitating the infiltration of only two LeT terrorists,but the CID says it’s is half-truth. “He has named Sikandar and Iqbal,but this is probably because he knows we are familiar with these two terrorists. Sikandar was arrested by the J-K police and had said during interrogation that Shafiqul helped him make his way through Bengal. Iqbal’s whereabouts are unknown. We believe he has facilitated the crossover of several LeT terrorists over the past seven to eight years,” Gupta said.

This is the second instance in the past two years that a facilitator has been apprehended in Bengal.

In April 2007,the BSF arrested Maharashtra-based SIMI activist Sheikh Abdul Naeem and three LeT terrorists at Petrapole on the international border.