GUWAHATI: Assam government has drawn an SoP for Imams coming from other states or countries and the Islamic community of the state to follow amid back-to-back arrests of as many as three clerics in the current month, who are alleged to be members of Al Qaeda.
Chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Monday said, “We have made some SoP that if any Imam comes to a village in the state and the villagers do not know him, they should immediately inform the police. Only after the police verify the antecedents of these Imams, they will be allowed to stay. All the Imams coming from outside the state also have to register themselves in a government portal. These are not for Imams of the state.”
Two Imams were arrested in Assam’s Goalpara district on Saturday evening after their links were found to the two different modules of the Bangladesh based radical Islamic group Ansar ul-Islam, a chapter of All Qaeda in Indian Subcontinent (AQIS).
Earlier, more than 30 AQIS members, including a Bangladeshi national, have been arrested so far who are members of five modules of AQIS that have been busted in the past five months. The hub of these modules have been found to be in madrassas.
Few weeks back the chief minister had appealed to the “peace-loving Muslim population of the state” not to “entertain any imam if he is from outside your area and instead report him to the nearest police station”.
He also asked parents of children studying in madrassas to visit these places frequently and “monitor” what their wards were being taught.
The government has already closed over 600 government-run madrassas in the state but about 800 more madrasas run by non-government organizations are still functioning.
