By Arun Pratap Singh
Dehradun, 11 Oct: Director General of Police Ashok Kumar today informed the media that the Uttar Pradesh ATS has arrested two Ghazwa-e-Hind terrorists from Haridwar with the help of Uttarakhand STF.
He said, certain areas of Haridwar district were being used by certain forces to promote the ideology of Ghazwa-E-Hind. One of the eight suspected terrorists arrested by the UP ATS is a Bangladeshi living in Haridwar for a long time. A local youth was his friend. It is feared that he has connected hundreds of youth of Haridwar with his ideology.
The joint team has arrested Ali Noor, resident of Salempur, district Haridwar, who was a native of village Jaharan, district Dhaka in Bangladesh, and also arrested Mudassir, resident of Nagla Imarti, Roorkee, Haridwar. During their interrogation, the Uttarakhand connection has also been revealed.
The Uttarakhand STF apprehends that both of them were trying to incite local youth of Uttarakhand by connecting them with Ghazwa-e-Hind ideology. It has also come to notice that these persons were getting a lot of money through terror funding. With these funds, they were attempting to prepare their own local terror module. Mudassir had brought the Bangladeshi youth with him to Haridwar district. One of his relatives had introduced both of them at an event in Kolkata. Since then, both were associated with the ideology of Ghazwa-e-Hind. It was revealed that they were training and brainwashing the youth in Jwalapur and its surrounding areas to become associated with Ghazwa E Hind ideology which aims at turning India into an Islamic country. They were holding regular meetings and also distributed literature among the local youth.
Sources claimed that they were arrested by UP ATS based on inputs that the ATS had received from others arrested in UP in this regard. The arrest was made in cooperation with Uttarakhand STF. However, as the UP ATS has taken their custody and taken them away to UP, the Uttarakhand STF did not have detailed information about them. It remains to be seen, however, if Uttarakhand STF undertakes its own investigation into the case and investigates to find any more local links involved in terror activities or inciting local youth. This is a highly sensitive issue related to internal security and the state’s intelligence and police networks need to undertake their own investigation. Ajay Singh, SSP, Uttarakhand STF said that any further details regarding the arrested youth could only be provided by UP ATS.
