West Bengal court sends suspected Islamic State operative to 14-day police custody

Kolkata: A West Bengal court on Wednesday remanded Mohammad Masiuddin, arrested on suspicion of having links with the Islamic State (IS), in 14-day police custody. Masiuddin alias Musa, 25, was detained at Burdwan railway station on Monday and subsequently arrested on Tuesday by the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) after his interrogation allegedly revealed links with “foreign extremists”, including the IS. He was presented before a court in Howrah which remanded him in CID custody for 14 days. [caption id=“attachment_2877414” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational image. Reuters[/caption] He was picked up by the sleuths off a train while he was on his way to his home in Labhpur in Birbhum district. According to CID Deputy Inspector General Dilip Kumar Adak, Musa is a native of Labhpur but used to live in Tiruppur in Tamil Nadu along with his wife and two children and worked in a grocery shop. Police seized a 13-inch machete and an improvised firearm from his possession. State and central intelligence agencies, including the National Investigation Agency (NIA), have been questioning the man. The investigators are also studying the data recovered from his mobile phone which have revealed “his terror links”, according to officials. Musa is the second person to be arrested from West Bengal for suspected links with the IS. The NIA in March arrested Ashik Ahammed alias Raja, a resident of Dhaniakhali in Hooghly district, for being an “IS facilitator”. The arrest comes in the wake of the deadly terror attack in Dhaka in which 20 people were killed. The state has been on high alert with the Border Security Force intensifying vigil across the India-Bangladesh border. The police has also not ruled out Musa’s involvement with the Bangladeshi militant outfit Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB). An accidental blast at a house in Khagragarh in Burdwan district in October 2014 led to the NIA busting a JMB terror module in the state.