Have the Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh and ULFA's Paresh Barua faction joined forces? Indrani Roy/Rediff.com reports.
Agents investigating the Burdwan blast case have discovered that the improvised explosive devices smuggled from Burdwan's Khagragarh area were transported to the Nalbari and Buxa districts in Assam, sources in the Assam police told Rediff.com
The Assam police and the National Investigation Agency obtained this information after they interrogated Shahnoor Alam, the Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh's alleged financial brain, sources said.
The IEDs were kept with Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh operatives, Alam told the Assam police and the NIA.
Alam, who hails from Chatala village in Assam's Barpeta district, was arrested by the NIA from Nalbari district in early December.
Alam and his wife Sujana Begum allegedly arranged finances for the Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh's Indian modules.
Sujana Begum was arrested in Guwahati on November 7.
Top Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh leaders, Alam disclosed to his interrogators, recently met with the United Liberation Front of Asom's Paresh Barua faction.
At that meeting, leaders of both terror groups agreed to exchange arms and ammunition and 'blueprints' of terror activities, sources told Rediff.com
Alam told his interrogators that most of the IEDs manufactured at the Khagragarh apartment were moved to Assam before the October 2 blast that alerted intelligence agencies to the terror plots being brewed in Bengal.
Members of the Assam police's Special Task Force are conducting extensive searches across the state to trace the IEDs.
The news of ULFA's Paresh Barua faction joining hands with the Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh is of concern for both the NIA and the Assam police, sources told Rediff.com
A court in Chittagong, Bangladesh, awarded the death penalty to Paresh Barua and 13 others in January in connection with an arms haul in 2004.
The Bangladesh police had then seized 10 trucks of weapons from a Chittagong jetty. According to investigators, the weapons were being shipped to Barua's ULFA faction.
Barua, whose objective is an independent Assam, has been absconding since the incident and the Chittagong court sentenced him in absentia.
On Saturday, December 20, the NIA again took into custody two blast accused held in Khagragarh -- Abdul Hakim alias Hasan and his wife Alima alias Amina Bibi. Investigators will question the couple about the missing IEDs.
A Kolkata court on Saturday allowed the NIA to bring three blast accused, including Shahnoor Alam, from Guwahati to the city on transit remand.
A collective grilling of all the accused together, sources told Rediff.com, will help investigators get leads in the Burdwan blast case.
Image: National Security Guard personnel at the site of the Burdwan blast in October.
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