india

Updated: Jun 25, 2019 23:19 IST

A special task force (STF) of Kolkata police has arrested four suspected militants affiliated to a Bangladesh-based terror outfit near the Sealdah and Howrah railway stations, according to a statement released by the police on Tuesday.

While three of them are Bangladeshi nationals, one is from West Bengal’s Birbhum district, the police said.

The four are “members of the neo-Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen/Islamic State, a banned terror outfit,” the STF said in the statement, adding, “They took shelter in India to escape arrest in Bangladesh”.

Photos, videos, and booklets on jihad were seized from the militants, aged between 23 and 44 years, STF officers claimed.

Their objective was to overthrow the governments in India and Bangladesh and establish a caliphate [an Islamic state] in the region, the officers said.

Those arrested have been identified as Jiaur Rahman, alias Mohsin alias Jahir Abbas (44), Mamonur Rashid (33), Sahin Alam alias Alamin (23) and Robiul Islam (35). While Robiul is from West Bengal, the rest are Bangladeshi nationals.

“They were active on social media propagating their agenda and a lot of digital documents, videos and audio files along with jihadi booklets were recovered from possession,” one of the STF officers said on the condition of anonymity.

The accused were produced before the chief metropolitan magistrate in Kolkata on Tuesday. They were remanded in police custody until July 9.

The Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh’s role in terror activities in West Bengal came to the fore after the detonation of an improvised explosive device (IED) in Burdwan town on October 2, 2014, in which two suspected militants were killed.