Three persons allegedly with links to Al Qaeda have been arrested by Special Task Force (STF) of Kolkata Police, on Tuesday.

Deputy Commissioner, STF, Murlidhar Sharma said that the three – Samsad Mia (26) alias Tushar Biswas, Riazul Islam (25) alias Riaz alias Suman and Manotosh Dey (46) have been arrested from Kolkata Railway Station in north Kolkata between 2.30 and 3 pm. One of them even possessed a fake Aadhaar card.

It was found that Samsad and Riazul were Bangladeshi nationals and members of banned Bangladeshi group Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT) also called Ansar Bangla and had come to purchase arms and chemicals used for making explosives. “ABT is responsible for the murder of several bloggers in Bangladesh and has direct links with Al-Qaeda network in the Indian sub continent. Samsad occupies a senior position in the ABT hierarchy. A fake Aadhaar card of Samsad has also been recovered where he is named himself Tushar Biswas. We are trying to find out where and how did he get the Aadhaar card done,” said Deputy Commissioner, STF.

He said that there were specific inputs from Central Intelligence Bureau about their movement. “We were told by Central IB during the final phase of Durga puja and while the U-17 FIFA World Cup was on, that 2-3 persons from Bangladesh have or will soon come to Bengal from other part of the country. Acting on that input, in the last 20-25 days we started combing operation at various stations, bus stands and intelligence network was also engaged. We had come to know that they came to purchase arms,” Sharma added.

Sources said that they had come here to engage people to join their module and might have had plans for some terror activities here as well as since hand written papers with names such as ‘Esplanade Bus Stand’ and ‘Eden Gardens’ written on it have been found.

Sharma said that other than a 7.32 mm pistol, a single shotter pistol, a laptop, a number of pen drives, several magazines were recovered related Al-Qaeda and Islamic State. “One of the magazines described how to make explosives while another said how to conduct a recce of a place. There was also literature on religious speeches,” he said.

It was found out that they had been visiting various chemicals shops and were enquiring about chemicals specifically used to prepare explosives. Many visiting cards of such shops had been recovered from them. “We have come to know that the two have illegally entered India and had met Dey who is a resident of Basirhat and is an arms dealer. They met him today after deferring the meeting for the past few days with the intention of buying arms and Dey had come with two samples. The duo said that they have been staying in India for the last one and a half years. We will have to interrogate them thoroughly to find out what their intentions were and will have to verify all the statements which they have given so far. They have said that they were not staying in any hotels but spent the nights at railway stations, passenger restrooms and other such places,” Sharma added.

In September 2016, six suspected Jamaat-ul Mujahideen (JuM) members had been arrested from West Bengal and Assam for their involvement in several terror activities including the Burdwan blast in 2014.