Kolkata, Aug 1 (SocialNews.XYZ) The Special Task Force (STF) of West Bengal Police has revealed that Jaish‑e‑Mohammed (JeM) planned to disrupt the recent protest rally organised by the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi.
The disclosure came following the arrest and interrogation of suspected JeM associate Hamim Mondal and his aide Arpita Sarkar, taken into custody within the past 24 hours.
Hamim was arrested from Burdwan in East Burdwan district of West Bengal on Friday, while Sarkar was arrested from Sahibganj in neighbouring Jharkhand.
“There were plans to procure police uniforms for this purpose, so that they could mix with the crowd posing as cops and thus create chaos. However, it is not clear whether Hamim or Sarkar went to Jantar Mantar or not, or whether they were ultimately successful in procuring police uniforms,” said STF Inspector General Gaurav Sharma.
Sarkar was presented at a lower court in Kolkata on Saturday and was remanded to STF custody for 14 days. Earlier on Friday, the same court had also remanded Hamim to 14 days of STF custody.
That West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari and his cabinet colleague Umesh Rai were targets of JeM was revealed immediately after Hamim’s arrest on Friday morning.
On Saturday, Sharma told media persons that some police officers and other politicians were also targets of Hamim and his associates.
“A few days ago, information surfaced that there was a plan to honeytrap a senior politician in Howrah and kidnap his son. There were reports that an organisation was involved in this. Based on that, suspicion fell on a social media handle in Sahibganj. The handle belonged to Arpita Sarkar,” Sharma said.
Later, Sharma added that from Sarkar’s social media handles, STF sleuths came across Hamim.
“Hamim was in contact with Arpita for the last four years. They first contacted each other on social media and later met. It was revealed Hamim had tried to spread the network using Arpita,” Sharma said.
Police sources said that after interrogating Hamim, investigators tracked other social media handles, namely ‘Rana’, ‘Uzair’, ‘Abid Jat333’ and ‘Hamad’, among others.
“Investigation revealed that all these social media handles belonged to Pakistani handlers,” a police official said.
He added that Hamim has been in contact with these handles for the last two to three months.
“He first started following them on Instagram. He also contacted them on WhatsApp and Telegram. Investigators suspect these handles were linked to the criminal gang of Pakistani gangster Shahzad Bhatti. Through these, various fundamentalist propaganda was spread, and youth were targeted for brainwashing,” he said.
The official confirmed that Hamim was contacted from Pakistan through encrypted chats.
“The investigation revealed that these Pakistani handles also used SIM cards from Britain and Mexico,” the official said.
Source: IANS
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