
Gujarat ATS arrests 4 persons linked to banned terror outfit 'Al-Qaeda in Indian Subcontinent'
"Terror module affiliated with AQIS has been busted by the Gujarat ATS. Four persons linked to the proscribed terror outfit have been arrested," the anti-terror agency said in a statement.
The ATS will provide further details about the operation later in the day.
In 2023, four Bangladeshi nationals were arrested from different parts of the city for having links with the same terror outfit.

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


India Today
40 minutes ago
- India Today
India Today impact: Rights body acts on illegal madrasas along India-Nepal border
The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has taken cognisance of a special investigation by India Today that exposed a network of unregulated and illegal madrasas operating along the Indo-Nepal border, allegedly involved in radical indoctrination, illegal foreign funding, and internal security member Priyanka Kanungo announced on Saturday that the rights panel is taking action based on the disturbing are taking cognisance and initiating action,' Kanungo said in a post on X (formerly Twitter), citing video evidence uncovered by India Today. @aajtak Priyank Kanoongo (@KanoongoPriyank) July 27, 2025 The India Today investigation revealed that several madrasas in Bihar and across the border in Nepal were functioning without government recognition and were accepting money routed through illegal hawala channels, primarily from Gulf countries. It brought to light radical teachings and the use of controversial materials in some of these Bihar's Muzaffarpur district, a teacher at Jamia Nuria Merajul Uloom admitted on camera to receiving hawala funds and providing 'jihadi training' to poor Muslim children. The aim, he said, was to indoctrinate and exploit them for extremist unregistered institution, Madrasa Islamia Mehmoodia in Sitamarhi, was found operating from a makeshift tin shed without any signage. Its administrator disclosed that fake Indian identification documents were used to admit undocumented children, including those of Bangladeshi from the investigation also showed videos of controversial Islamic preacher Zakir Naik being shown to students. In addition, a religious textbook titled Taaleem-ul-Islam, which describes non-Muslims as 'kafirs,' was part of the curriculum taught to young children at these the border in Nepal, the probe uncovered a similar network, with reports of foreign funding and jihadi messaging in unregulated Islamic institutions.- EndsMust Watch


The Print
3 hours ago
- The Print
A year after Bangladesh's Monsoon Revolution, a parched summer looms ahead
Even as Bangladesh prepares to mark the first anniversary of the so-called Monsoon Revolution — the violent rebellion that forced former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed to flee the country — disquiet is mounting over the legacy of those dramatic events. The de facto Prime Minister, Chief Advisor Mohammad Yunus, has announced that elections will be held in April. But no one knows for sure if this will halt the country's descent into chaos and the disintegration of its multicultural ethos. 'The doors of hell were forced wide open,' the elderly Saraswati Sarkar recalled to a team of jurists , 'They chased women, children, men like ferocious, blind, and passionate brutes, hungry for blood and murder, and the flesh of women.' Truckloads of dead bodies were driven past Nitaiganj, Kshirodi Bala Dasi later remembered , to be tossed into the river Lakha, not far from the Isphani Jute Mills. Vultures, kites, and crows gorged themselves through the day as the bodies rotted; at night, jackals would gather to feast. There was no one left to help. The few local Hindus who had escaped the massacres had fled into the woods, leaving behind their burned-down homes. Finding drinking water was almost impossible: the river stank of death for weeks, until the end of 1964. Large-scale mob violence, journalists Arafat Rahaman and Sajjad Hossain write, has claimed 179 lives in the last ten months, often in the presence of police. The victims include politicians, members of religious minorities, women accused of dressing improperly, purported blasphemers, and, in one case, a person suffering from psychiatric illness. Women's football matches have had to be cancelled due to mob threats, Hindu shrines have been vandalised, and national monuments, like founding patriarch Sheikh Mujib-ur-Rahman's home, burned down. Islamist groups, meanwhile, are growing in power. The Jamaat-e-Islami, proscribed under Prime Minister Hasina for its role in war crimes during 1971, has cashed in on the anti-establishment, populist sentiments that drove last year's youth protests. The release of cleric Jashimuddin Rahmani, an al-Qaeda-inspired ideologue who preached violence online, has given renewed space to jihadist groups such as Ansarullah Bangla Team, Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh, and Hizb ut-Tahrir. To end the chaos, a political outcome is needed, one that is inclusive and empowers the institutions of governance. But former Prime Minister Hasina's Awami League has been banned, leaving a substantial section of Bangladesh's voters without representation in the April elections. The party had previously been proscribed three times — by Field Marshal Ayub Khan in 1958, General Yahya Khan in 1971, and General Ziaur Rahman in 1975. Little imagination is needed to see that the fascist impulses that overpowered Bangladesh in 1964—just seven years before the Liberation War, which cast it as a hero of secular-democratic politics—could be unleashed, should a genuine restoration of democracy prove illusory. A million and a half refugees came to India in 1950; more than 6,00,000 in 1951-52; another 1.6 million between 1953 and 1956. Largely landless Muslims also streamed into the east, but didn't leave behind properties that could be used for rehabilitation. India considered using its military to seize territory in Khulna and Jessore, historian Pallavi Raghavan has written, but concluded that war would mean even more refugees. The 1964 killings, however, sparked a ferocious communal response in India, with 264 people reported killed in Kolkata alone. Also read: Coup rumours are circulating in Dhaka. Here's why the army isn't keen on it Fragmenting democracy The road to disillusionment has been a short one for Bangladeshis. In 1990, a mass uprising—involving future Prime Ministers Hasina and her Bangladesh Nationalist Party rival Khaleda Zia—overthrew military dictator Husain Muhammad Ershad. Elections saw Prime Minister Khaleda take power, beginning what scholar Ali Riaz, now an advisor to Yunus, has called the country's new democratic era. Five years later, Khaleda peacefully conceded power when the Awami League won the next election. From the outset, though, there were cracks in the new system. First, as Riaz notes, both major parties discarded the allies who had backed them during the struggle against General Ershad. This narrowed the reach of the political system. Second, both parties launched mass movements against the government while in opposition, undermining its legitimacy. Khaleda's victory in 2001 created new imbalances. Although the electoral margin was razor-thin, the first-past-the-post system gave the BNP a substantial majority in Parliament. Hasina alleged electoral fraud and initially refused to join the new Parliament. Her MPs later took their oaths, but in 2006, the parties deadlocked over appointing a caretaker government to supervise elections. In early 2007, the Awami League announced it would boycott the polls. Faced with this impasse—and widespread street violence that left dozens dead—the military stepped in. Army chief General Moeen Ahmed persuaded the President to declare a state of Emergency. Former World Bank official Fakhruddin Ahmed took charge as Chief cases were filed against both Zia and Hasina in what was initially hailed as a campaign to clean up the country's system. Islamist rise Two principal forces benefitted from this democratic collapse. First was the Jamaat-e-Islami, heir to the Pakistan Army's war crimes in 1971. During 2001-2005, scholar Devin Hagerty notes, the Jama'at leveraged its 18 MPs to secure control over the ministries of agriculture and social welfare. This, together with remittances from supporters in the Middle East, allowed it to set up a massive network of seminaries, economic institutions, and welfare organisations. For all practical purposes, the Jama'at became 'a state within a state.' Islamists outside the political mainstream also flourished. Closely linked to Lashkar-e-Taiba and al-Qaeda, the Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh drew hundreds of recruits from Salafist seminaries. In August 2005, the group set off an estimated 500 bomb explosions, targeting 300 locations in 63 of the country's 64 districts. The organisation's hopes of setting up an Islamist mini-state were crushed by security forces, but it laid the foundation for persistent threats to Bangladesh, as well as India. Hizb-ut-Tahrir, led by diaspora elements in the United Kingdom, brought caliphate ideology to elite campuses. The al-Qaeda-affiliated Ansarullah Bangla Team later began assassinating progressive activists. The new authoritarianism After returning to power post-Emergency, Prime Minister Hasina built an order designed to insulate her regime from political and security threats. The Awami League cracked down on BNP street protests, jailed opposition leaders, and used force ahead of the 2014 elections. For the most part, judicial independence was erased through political control of appointments and threats. The caretaker governance system, established in 1996 to ensure impartial elections, was abolished in 2011. To insulate itself from jihadist and Jamaat-e-Islami attacks, Hasina's government allied with Hefazat-e-Islam Bangladesh, a movement of clerics and madrasa students. Hefazat's demands included Islamic language in the Constitution, gender segregation in public spaces, and capital punishment for blasphemy — eating into Jamaat's traditional support base. The Awami League's strategy to crush the opposition worked in 2018 and again in 2024. But in July, what began as a student protest against job quotas evolved into a mass movement to oust Hasina and her increasingly authoritarian regime. The government responded with violence. Eventually, fearing the cracking of the country's social edifice as well as state, the army forced Hasina out. For the upcoming elections to matter, they must mark the beginning of an inclusive political revival and the rebuilding of a multicultural society. There is no roadmap, but there are plenty of reminders of what failure will look like. Eleven hundred people were killed in East Pakistan in 1964, official estimates say. An American Peace Corps nurse counted 600 bodies at a single hospital in Dhaka. Each of those bodies is a reminder that Bangladesh's Arab Spring could all too easily give way to a long, parched summer. Praveen Swami is contributing editor at ThePrint. He tweets with @praveenswami. Views are personal. (Edited by Prashant)


Hindustan Times
3 hours ago
- Hindustan Times
Bangladesh's BNP functionary lived in Bengal for 30 years, wife held: Police
Kolkata: A functionary of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) was living in West Bengal's North 24 Parganas district for the past 30 years as an enrolled voter, police said on Sunday, a day after his wife — who claims to be an Indian national — was arrested. At least 300 Bangladeshis have been apprehended from various districts of West Bengal since December last year. (Representative photo) 'Sherful Mondal, a resident of the district's Bagdah area, said that she married Rezaul Mondal around 30 years ago but came to know later that he was a BNP leader and had entered India illegally,' a police officer, requesting anonymity, said. Sherful said that Rezaul returned to Bangladesh months before a mass uprising forced Awami League leader Sheikh Hasina to resign as Prime Minister and leave the country in July last year. 'Rezaul came under scanner after police started looking for his son, Firoz, for allegedly eloping with a minor girl three months ago. A case was registered against him under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act. The probe indicated that Firoz is a Bangladeshi national,' the officer said. Also Read: Bengal launch helpline amid migrant worker harassment row; BJP floats counter helpline The officer said that Rezaul presented Sherful's mother, Cherbanu Mondal, as his mother while procuring an Elector's Photo Identity Card (EPIC). 'Sherful was arrested for helping an illegal immigrant,' the officer added. Prasun Pramaik, the block development officer (BDO) of Bagdah, said that Rezaul's nationality was exposed when Election Commission officials were doing field work. 'EC officials went to the area to update the electoral roll when the man and his son could not be found,' the BDO said. Also Read: '52 migrant workers detained in Gurugram': Bengal CM raps govt North 24 Parganas is one of the districts in West Bengal that share an international border with Bangladesh. The Border Security Force (BSF) and other agencies have intensified vigil along the border since 2024 in view of the political unrest in Bangladesh. At least 300 Bangladeshis have been apprehended from various districts of West Bengal since December last year.