Assam Police Detains Hindu Girl in Nagaon for Allegedly Having Ties With Hizbul Mujahideen

* Three, including a woman, arrested with arms

A correspondent

NAGAON, Sept 21: Delving deep into activities of the Hizbul Mujahideen in the State, Hojai police have found that the Islamic outfit did a lot of spadework to rope in youths of the State, including Hindu girls, in, what they call, jihad. The enormity of the problem has been depicted right with the arrest of three other persons, including a woman, at Nonoi in Nagaon district on Friday evening.

Hojai police on Friday picked up a Hindu girl from Jamunamukh for her alleged link with the Hizbul Mujahideen. According to the police, the girl was an employee of a Jamunamukh-based medical laboratory owned by Shahnewaj Alom, a close associate of Qamir Uz Zaman. What the girl said during interrogation reminded the investigators the Kamal Hasan-starrer Hindi feature film Viswaroopam that showed the modus operandi of terrorist outfits controlling and extending their disruptive activities from a medical laboratory.

According to police sources, the girl has said that she was repeatedly asked to convert into Islam and work for jihad. This, the girl said, was done with tempting offers that fortune would favour her once she embraced Islam, and that the fortune would come from Shahnewaj Alom and his colleagues.

In an interaction with this correspondent, Hojai SP Ankur Jain said that apart from the girl, some other people close to Shahnewaj Alom were picked up. “We’re trying to find out the sentiment or mental attitude of Shahnewaj Alom to root out what attracts people towards terrorist outfits or fundamentalist organizations,” SP Jain said.

The SP has further said that all people apprehended in connection with Islamic terrorist organizations in the State are being interrogated separately at some secret places.

Meanwhile, Nagaon police led by town SI Jiban Marak on Friday evening apprehended three persons, including a woman along with arms and ammunition at Nonoi in Nagaon. The police later seized one 7.65 mm pistol, five rounds live bullets and a Nano car (AS 02 K 4451) from the trio. The three have been identified as Firuja Begum, Salman Uddin and Shahidur Rahman of Murajhar Joyanagar in Hojai district.