Assam, Meghalaya cops claim infiltration by five Islamic terror suspects, BSF denies

The porous Indo-Bangla border has become the escape route for the Bangladeshi militants, after the neighbouring country launched a massive search operation following terrorist attacks, says a source in Assam police. Assam has been alerted by the Meghalaya police of infiltration of five suspected militants through the Indo-Bangla border. “On 3 July, a day after the Gulshan siege was over, sources of Meghalaya police spotted five suspected Bangladeshi nationals crossing into the Indian territory,” said the source. “They are suspected to be the Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh millitants, who provided logistic support to the Gulshan attackers and fled to India to elude the search operation launched there,” he further said. [caption id=“attachment_2577290” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  File photo of Meghalaya police. Reuters[/caption] He added that they had rucksacks on their backs and were trying to communicate with the villagers in English and Bengali. “They are unlikely to be the ones among the infiltrators, who cross the border to work as daily wage labourers in Assam, for daily wage labourers are rarely well conversant in English,” he further said. “This is not the first case where ‘jihadi’ elements have been reported to have entered Assam through the porous borders of north-eastern states,” said Lurinjyoti Gogoi, the general secretary of the All Assam Students Union. He further added that there are many records with security forces, which prove that porous border in the region has become the route for fundamentalist forces to enter and camp in India. He also said that the Indo-Bangla border in Meghalaya is mostly unfenced, through which the recent incident of infiltration is said to have happened. The All Assam Students Union and North East Students’ Organisation have been demanding to seal the forest that covers the Indo-Bangla border of Meghalaya. A source in the Guwahati City Police said that the route through which the suspected militants are said to have entered is directly connected to Guwahati, which is not only the hub of north-east but also the epicentre of transport and communication networks to the entire country. “This is basically a hill and forest tract that connects Guwahati and Mymensingh in  Bangladesh through Goalpara district  in Assam and South Garo hills in Meghalaya,” he added. This route, often used by militant organisations, is seen as a security  threat to India because once militant groups safely complete the journey from Bangladesh to Guwahati, they can move to anywhere in the country from the capital city of Assam. But a BSF source denied any infiltration through the Meghalaya border and said that Meghalaya frontier of the BSF has launched an operation in south Garo hills after such information poured in, but found no clue to it.