SOURCE: INDIA TODAY
An Intelligence Bureau (IB) report has revealed Al-Qaeda operatives planning an attack in West Bengal. The intelligence unit has also suggested that Al-Qaeda terrorists are planning the attack in Bengal using sleeper cells.
The IB report was filed on November 5.Sources said with the help of foreign handlers, attempts were made to radicalise locals. During the questioning of an Al-Qaeda module, officials of National Investigation Agency (NIA) recently came across these revelations.
Sources have said Pakistan-based Al-Qaeda has been recruiting locals in Bengal through online mediums.
NIA sources have said Al-Qaeda has several top political leaders in Bengal as their target. The terror organisation is also said to have opened recruitment centres in Karachi and Peshawar in Pakistan from where they have been targeting locals in Bengal to radicalise them.
So far, NIA has arrested 11 terror operatives in connection with this radicalisation drive.
NIA recently arrested a man who was part of various social media groups run by Pakistan-based handlers of the outlawed Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorist group to recruit and radicalise youngsters for carrying out terror activities in India, an official said on Wednesday.
Sayyad M Idris, 28, a resident of Karnataka’s Uttara Kannada, was arrested from the southern state on Tuesday, a National Investigation Agency (NIA) spokesperson said.
The case, which arose out of an FIR registered in West Bengal on March 18, pertains to Pakistan-based handlers of the proscribed terror outfit, Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), using various social media platforms to radicalise and recruit vulnerable youngsters for its sleeper cells to propagate its ideology and for abetting and advocating unlawful activities in India, the NIA said.
