Suspected terrorist Mosiruddin has revealed his connections with top leaders of at least two terror groups and that he was deployed to spread their tentacles in West Bengal and other places in the eastern parts of the country, a top CID officer said today.
Mosiruddin, who was arrested from a running train earlier this week, revealed this when he along with his two accomplices Kallu Sheikh and Amin Sheikh was grilled jointly by the CID, National Investigation Agency (NIA) and Intelligence Bureau (IB).
"During the interrogation, the interrogators got hold of information which established Musiruddin's links with Islamic State (ISIS) and Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB)."
It was also found that Mosiruddin was called as Abu Al Musa Al by leaders of the terror groups and that he was close to ISIS' former chief in the country, Shafi Armar.
"He was in touch with Armar for quite some time and grew pretty close to him. They were in touch via social networking site and used fake email ids to communicate. He (Mosiruddin) was connected to other leaders of JMB also," the officer said.
During questioning, it was also found that Musiruddin had met a few top JMB leaders at least more than five times this year.
Musiruddin used to change his mobile numbers often, he said, adding that the suspected terrorist also used a specific app to stay in touch with the ISIS leaders and other members.
He was also actively linked to a few fundamentalist groups when he was pursuing graduation from a city college.
"He was pursuing graduation at Surendranath College in the city and had studied there till second year. Even from those days he was actively involved with fundamentalists," the officer said.
On the purpose of Musiruddin's recent visit to West Bengal after almost six years in Tamil Nadu's Trippur, where he was staying with his family and two children, the CID officer said "Though he is giving us different stories, we have got definite clues that Musiruddin was here to kill someone staying at his native Labhpur village in Birbhum district to settle an old score. Kallu Sheikh and Amin Sheikh were to help him in the act."
For this purpose Musiruddin had bought from New Market here the 13-inch-long knife, which was seized when he was apprehended from Vishwa Bharati Fast Passenger train at Amadpur in Burdwan district on Monday.
Besides, he also had plans to visit Nepal but its purpose was still not clear to the sleuths, he said.
Musiruddin's home at RRB Road in Trippur district's had
been raided by the sleuths yesterday and a laptop was seized.
His wife had also been interrogated.
The sleuths have also detained two more persons - Chandan Sheikh and Swapan Sheikh from Labhpur and they have been brought to Kolkata for questioning.
"From Musiruddin's mobile phone call list we found that several calls were made to these persons. It seems that he was in touch with several youths from the area. We are checking whether he was intending to build up a module in the state," the officer said.
Meanwhile, a Howrah court during the day remanded Kallu Sheikh and Amin Sheikh to police custody for 14 days.
After being apprehended, the sleuths seized an improvised small firearm and three rounds of bullets, besides the sharp weapon from Musiruddin.
On Monday, he had got down at Howrah station, went to Esplanade where he bought the sharp weapon and returned to it to board the train to return to Labhpur, the officer said.
Acting on an information that he was returning to Kolkata on Monday, CID tracked his movements in the city and arrested him from Burdwan station in the night.
CID sources said NIA sleuths had been keeping an eye on Mosiruddin for quite some time.
Burdwan district entered the terror map in October, 2014 when two suspected JMB terrorists were killed while making improvised explosive devices (IEDs) at a rented house at Khagragarh.
The NIA arrested a mechanical engineering student on suspicion of being a terrorist from Durgapur in March. Another person, suspected to be a Bangladeshi militant, was also arrested from Asansol late.
