Bangla Influx Taking Assam the Kashmir Way

Upakjyoti Borah

External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee admitted recently that a large-scale influx from Bangladesh posed a threat to India, especially to Assam, Tripura and West Bengal. His statement offers nothing new, for the Centre has known this since a long time; it only shows that he has renounced his denial mode.

The large-scale influx of Bangladeshis into Assam has been continuing since pre-independence days. It gave rise to a historic movement, the Assam Agitation (sometimes called the Assam Movement) between 1979 and 1985 to force the government to identify and expel the illegal migrants. The Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) came to power after the Assam Agitation riding on a popularity wave but failed to take steps to expel the Bangladeshis.

The problem has now reached epidemic proportions with the rise of Islamic fundamentalist groups in many parts of Assam, especially those parts dominated by the migrants. It has led to a demographic upheaval with an estimated 11 out of 27 districts in Assam becoming Muslim majority districts in contrast to only one Muslim majority district at the time of India's independence. This massive influx consists of Muslims of Bangladeshi origin.

On the other hand, Assamese Muslims share a common culture with the Assamese Hindus and have been very vocal against this influx. A few Bangladeshi Hindus have settled down in Assam post 1971 and have been accepted into the society on compassionate grounds.

The large-scale migration of illegal Bangladeshis has led to an acute unemployment problem with almost 20 lakh unemployed youths in Assam, many of whom have taken to the gun. Besides, it has had a disastrous effect on the environment with the denudation of forests and killing of wildlife.

The State and the Central government have been ignoring this problem out of concern for their vote-banks. Very few of the illegal migrants are caught and even fewer deported due to various loopholes in the law. Migrants, after entering India through Assam, have moved to various North-eastern states and other parts of the country, creating a security problem. Illegal migrants now have a decisive say in some 50 of the state's 126 assembly constituencies.
The indigenous people in the state are in danger of becoming a minority in their own land. The former governor of Assam, Lieutenant-General (retd.) S K Sinha, in a report had warned that, if the demographic invasion of Assam was not tackled on a priority basis, the survival of the Assamese people would be at stake and their employment opportunities would be reduced. Several Islamic fundamentalist outfits operate in Assam.

The presence of lakhs of illegal Bangladeshi migrants in Assam has provided a fertile recruiting and breeding ground for these terror outfits. The growth of radical Islam in neighboring Bangladesh has also helped these outfits. In 2005, the Supreme Court had struck down the Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunal) Act.

However, the amended Foreigners (Tribunals for Assam) Order 2006 contains the same provisions as the Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunal) Act, which makes the detection and deportation of illegal Bangladeshis from Assam very difficult. The attitude of the Central government has also alienated the mainstream Assamese who feel that the Centre is paying little attention to an issue which concerns their survival, which has stoked their separatist tendencies.
Unlike many of the North-eastern states, Assam does not have an Inner-Line Permit System, which makes it easy for anyone to settle in Assam. The border fencing along the Indo-Bangladesh border in Assam is proceeding at a tardy pace.

It does not need a soothsayer to predict what lies ahead for Assam and the Northeast if the jehadists succeed. Bangladesh has been providing sanctuary to many of the militant outfits in the Northeast and the Indian government seems to be helpless in this matter. Often the BDR (Bangladesh Rifles) have attacked the BSF (Border Security Force) outposts, as in 2001 at Pyrdiwah in Megalaya, where 16 BSF men were killed, many of them were brutally tortured to death.

The time is ripe for India to learn from its past mistakes and take urgent steps to tackle this threat. As they say, a stitch in time saves nine.

The writer is Research Scholar, JNU. Courtesy IPCS

http://indiapost.com/article/perspective/2713/

ULFA recruiting Bangladeshis

SHILLONG – The recruitment of Bangladeshi nationals by the outlawed ULFA came to light today with the BSF arresting an ultra, a native of the neighbouring country, from Meghalaya, reports PTI. Troops of the BSF’s 35 Battalion nabbed Parameshwar Chandra Kotch near the Chandabui outpost in Meghalaya’s West Garo hills district today.

A resident of Sherpur district in Bangladesh, Kotch has been working for the ULFA since 2001 under the direct guidance of ULFA leader Ranju Chowdhury at the Baragajni camp of the group in Bangladesh, the BSF quoted Kotch as saying during investigation.

Kotch said he used to collect information for the ULFA from the Indo-Bangla border areas.

The BSF claims that Kotch was instrumental in recruiting youths of Meghalaya and Assam into the outfit.

He has ferried youths in groups of three-four at least 15-20 times from Assam and Meghalaya to the rebel camps of Bangladesh, he said during investigation.

The arrest comes in the backdrop of India pressing on the neighbouring country to dismantle the ULFA camps working in its territory and flush out the militants. Dhaka has been denying about the presence of Indian militants in its territory.

http://www.assamtribune.com/scripts/details.asp?id=may2708/at03

Bangladesh’s new citizens

The Statesman Editorial - 24th May, 2008,

The emotive issue of “Urdu-speaking Bihari Muslims” in Bangladesh is as old as the country itself and has been a permanent irritant in subcontinental equations. Yet the judicial intervention after 37 years addresses only part of the problem. By virtue of last Sunday’s order of the Bangladesh Supreme Court, children of Urdu-speaking Bihari Muslims ~ a euphemism for stranded Pakistanis ~ are to be granted Bangladeshi citizenship. The operative part of the ruling is that it will benefit those born after 1971. Which begs the question as to whether this needed to be reinforced by a judicial pronouncement. Under international law, they are citizens by birth, and it follows ipso facto that they are citizens of Bangladesh. More than labouring the obvious, the judgment has ensured that this post-liberation generation will form a vital segment of the electorate as the ruling comes with the icing of voting rights. This is calculated to benefit the present establishment under the influence of an army with pro-Pakistan leanings. Critical too is its timing as it comes months ahead of the elections scheduled for December.Comforting as it might appear to be on the face of it, the problem might fester for a long while yet. And most crucially, and also of course damagingly, for India as it has been a major factor behind the relentless influx since the late seventies. An estimated 150,000 Bihari Muslims will now become lawful citizens. The crux of the matter relates to the rest of the approximately 300,000, specifically the previous generation who migrated to East Pakistan after Partition, remained there during the liberation struggle, and who are believed to have backed the Pakistani army during the war. They have been reduced to a stateless category in Bangladesh, nowhere men whom Pakistan will not accept. Which precisely has compelled hundreds of them to take advantage of the porous border for an exit route to West Bengal.For 37 years, Pakistan has ignored the issue. So the fundamental problem shall fester as there has never been an inclination on the part of Dhaka, still less of Islamabad, to work out an agreement on repatriation. They have been stranded in Bangladesh since 1971, and those among them who have not illegally crossed over to India are languishing in the squalid refugee camps set up by its government and the UNHCR. The ruling makes it plain that Bangladesh will accept the younger generation not least because they constitute a potential vote-bank. Their forebears have not been recognised and are doomed to remain stateless. The fact of the matter remains ~ West Bengal has borne the brunt of the problem as tens of thousands of unrepatriated and “stranded” Pakistanis have sneaked in over the past three decades. That, in sum, is the reality of what passes for South Asian regional cooperation.

http://www.thestatesman.net/page.news.php?clid=3&theme=&usrsess=1&id=205249

Rajasthan Govt targets illegal Bangladeshi migrants

Jaipur/Udaipur,May 16: Illegal Bangladeshi migrants in Rajasthan will be identified in 30 days and could be deported as they came under the scanner of the state government after the serial blasts while a hotelier claimed he saw one of the suspects in Udaipur two days before the attack.
Investigators got fresh leads like ten bicycles having been bought about two to three hours before Tuesday night's blasts that left 64 dead but a breakthrough eluded them.
With the Bangladesh-based HuJI being suspected to be behind the blasts, state PWD Minister Rajendra Singh Rathore said the state government is on a hunt for Bangladeshis with suspected criminal background. Forty such Bangladeshi nationals have been rounded up so far and are being interrogated, he said.
Eight of them were detained in Ajmer. All District Collectors and Superintendents of Police have been directed to complete within 30 days the process of identifying Bangladeshi migrants living with or without voter ID cards and/or ration cards and get them verified, Rathore said.
The procedures for deporting the identified illegal nationals could then be started, he said. The process has begun everywhere in the state, he added. On Friday the State's Principal Home Secretary discussed with his Central counterpart the option of deporting illegally staying Bangladeshi nationals, he added.
Rathore sad 141 people were injured of whom 108 were in a "very serious." condition.
The owner of SamorBagh restaurant in Udaipur Kamal Joshi was interrogated by police after he claimed today that a person bearing resemblance to one of the sketches of suspects released on Thursday night was seen along with a woman in his restaurant on Sunday evening.
Joshi told the police that the man was accompanied by a young woman and both of them came to the restaurant at about 4 PM on Sunday.
The woman entered the restaurant wearing a saree but changed into a salwar kameez before leaving with the man, Joshi said, according to the police. They did not take anything in the restaurant, he said.
The in-charge of Surajpole police station Himmat Singh said investigations were on to check the movement of the duo in Udaipur.
Regarding the blasts probe, Rathore said sleuths from the state, Uttar Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh were working on a number of leads including use of bicycles, bag, and e-mail received from Ghaziabad.
Rathore said the purchase of eight cycles which were used in the blasts were confirmed but the sellers of two more cycles were yet to be identified.
A car seized by the Railway police outside Jaipur station on Thursday night belonged to one Afzal who went to Chennai to visit his ailing mother and left the vehicle in the no-parking zone, Rathore said. The police was investigating the matter following suspicions that it may have been used by the cycle bombers.
The e-mail sent on behalf a little known group claiming responsibility for the blats and traced to a Ghaziabad cyber cafe was being examined and its hard disc would be procured soon, Rathore said.

http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/Rajasthan-Govt-targets-illegal-Bangladeshi-migrants/310635/

One dead, 3 hurt in N Bengal explosion

(It is interesting to note - that N.Bengal acts as one of the corridors for jihadi infiltrators from Bangladesh into India & that the blast reported below was engineered keeping the explosives on a bicycle - some experts believe this was a dry run prior to the Jaipur blasts where the some of the explosives were also tied to a simple bicyle.)

13 May 2008, 0559 hrs IST,Pinak Priya Bhattacharya,TNN
JALPAIGURI: A man was killed and three others were injured in a blast at Barovisha in Jalpaiguri district on Monday. Gobind Sharma (28), a truck driver, was killed while Sudam Burman, Ranjit Saha and Suresh Sha were injured. Suresh is the owner of the truck that Gobind was driving. Police have claimed that the goons used an improvised explosive device of low intensity that went off around 10.20 am near the MVI office by the NH-31 in Barovisha, located along the Assam-Bengal border. The bomb was planted in a cycle lying in front of the office. They had left the truck and entered the MVI office to get permission to enter Assam. The bomb exploded when Suresh and Gobind came out of the MVI office with their permit. All the injured have been hospitalised. Earlier, on February 20, a bomb planted in a cycle exploded in front of the commercial tax office, killing one and injuring four. This time, too, goons used the same method to carry out the blast. This particular stretch of Barovisha remains busy throughout the day as vehicles keep moving to and from Assam and every single vehicle has to stop at the Barovisha checkpost for permission to enter Assam or Bengal. The area also houses a number of offices. During the February blast, it was suspected that the Cobra Commandos, a tribal insurgent outfit of Assam, was behind the blast. But police could not establish any link. So, this time, police have not named any specific outfit as their suspect. In October 2006, too, two serial blasts had rocked Barovisha, which has always had been a disturbed area. The place is used as a safe passage by both United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) and National Democratic Front of Boroland (NDFB) militants to go to their camps in the hills of Bhutan. Police have not yet named any specific outfit as their suspect. IGP, North Bengal, KL Tamta has gone to the spot for inspection. A team of experts will be coming from Kolkata to examine the type of explosive used in the blast.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Cities/Kolkata_/One_dead_3_hurt_in_N_Bengal_explosion/articleshow/3034743.cms

Simi activist detained by Jaipur blast investigators

Statesman News Service JAIPUR, May 17: A special investigation team probing into the serial bomb blasts in Jaipur has reportedly arrested a SIMI activist from Sawai Madhopur district in the early morning today. The state police has released three more sketches of people suspected to be involved in the serial bomb blasts and announced a reward of Rs 10 lakh to anyone providing clues about the perpetrators of the blasts that killed 64 and left over 200 injured. Though the Jaipur police have not yet confirmed the report of the arrest of the SIMI activist, police sources in Sawai Madhopur have told 'The Statesman' that a special police team from Jaipur had indeed carried out an operation in their district.The arrested youth, reportedly named Sajid. was closely associated with a madrasa in Sawai Madhopur and is also believed to be a member of the Rajasthan wing of the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). Sajid apparently had close links with the SIMI operatives from Madhya Pradesh. The special team is also focusing on the madrasas operating in the Shekawati belt comprising of Jhunjhunu, Churu and Sikar which had come under the police scanner after the Ajmer Dargah blast. The region also has active hawala transaction network and the police are trying to trace out if money was channeled to fund any terrorist operations. "A number of people have come forward claiming that they have seen the suspects from the police sketches but we are yet to make any major breakthrough in the case," said Mr Saurabh Shrivastav, deputy inspector general of police.

http://www.thestatesman.net/page.arcview.php?date=2008-05-18&usrsess=1&clid=2&id=231201

Blasts leads point to HuJI

Blasts leads point to HuJI Statesman News Service NEW DELHI, May 14: With leads in investigations into yesterday’s devastating serial terror blasts in Jaipur increasingly pointing to the suspected involvement of the Bangladesh-based terrorist group, Harkat-ul-Jehadi Islamia (HuJI) ~ which is said to carry out similar strikes sometimes in tandem with the Pakistan-based terror outfits like Lashkar-e-Toiyaba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) elsewhere in India ~, the Centre today said the Jaipur attack betrayed a “deep-rooted and very well-planned conspiracy” to disturb the country’s communal harmony, indicating the hands of a “neighbouring” country. Without specifying any country however, the Union minister of state for home, Mr Sriprakash Jaiswal told a news conference here that it could be any of the neighbouring countries ~ Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal and Myanmar ~ that had been gripped by internal turmoil. Mr Jaiswal, who earlier visited the Jaipur blasts sites, refused to specify the organisation involved in the attack, saying investigations are on. “I will not like to name the dangerous outfits.” To a specific query whether HuJI was behind it, he remained evasive, merely saying that those involved would be “thoroughly exposed” very soon. Significantly, the minister said there could be a link between the Jaipur blast and those that had occurred earlier in places such as Varanasi, Faizabad, Ajmer and Hyderabad. In most such terror strikes, including Malegaon, there had been tell-tale signs of HuJI’s footprints. In several of these strikes, like Jaipur, explosive ammonium nitrate laced with the deadly RDX, fitted with shrapnels or ball-bearings to maximise casualties and attached to timers, had been planted on bicycles. The modus operandi also involved carrying out strikes in or around premises of temples on Tuesdays, like in Jaipur and Varanasi, and of mosques on Fridays or its eve, like in Hyderabad and Malegaon, with an evident awareness that these days especially attract more devotees of these faiths there.BJP leader Mr LK Advani and chief minister Ms Vasundhara Raje today reiterated Bharatiya Janata Party's demand to revive the draconian law of POTA which according to them was the only viable option to combat the menace of terrorism. As per official figures, 63 persons lost their lives and 217 were injured. The deceased include seven women, eight children and two policemen. Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh has sanctioned Rs one lakh as ex-gratia for the families of those killed in the serial from the PM National Relief Fund. Those injured in the blasts will get Rs 50,000. The government has also announced compensation of Rs 5 lakh each to the families of the deceased and one lakh rupees to the injured victims "Out of the 63 who died in the blast, 11 were from outside Jaipur. Special medical teams have been summoned to Jaipur from Udaipur, Jodhpur and Ajmer. Seventeen dead bodies are yet to be identified,” according to Mr Rajendra Singh Rathore, minister for parliamentary affairs.Meanwhile the district administration has decided not to relax curfew imposed at various places including Galta gate, Ramganj, Subhash Chowk and Kotwali in the city. Areas under 13 police stations inside the city will be under curfew from 9 am to 4 pm.

http://www.thestatesman.net/page.arcview.php?date=2008-05-15&usrsess=1&clid=2&id=230686