BHOPAL: It took just Rs 4,000 in cash for Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) terrorists to breach India's border security and sneak in on a mission to set up sleeper cells in Bhopal, police said on Monday after interrogating the four JMB men arrested a day earlier.
The four of them had paid Rs 16,000 to touts, who helped them infiltrate through porous points along the 4,096km stretch India-Bangladesh border, said police. They most likely crossed over at Benapole, which shares a border with West Bengal's North 24-Parganas district and is barely 90km from Kolkata.
They posed as skilled labourers looking for construction work in India. The ease with which the four terrorists sneaked in has security agencies worried. "A special team has been set up to crack the network of touts. This team is led by a DSP. The JMB men have divulged certain names. We are working on it," MPATS chief Dr Ashish told TOI.
Accused got Aadhaar, PAN & voter IDs in Uttar Pradesh
Investigators are retracing their footprints to identify the network that helped them get in. A well-oiled network is at work but the terrorists' incursion and travel in India expose serious security lapses, officers say.
"They spent only Rs 4,000 each to enter India illegally. Their route was West Bengal/Assam, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. One of them got an Aadhaar card, PAN card and voter IDs in Sarangpur (UP). It's really worrying how foreign terrorists easily entered our borders and traveled unchecked to the central state," said an officer.
The four JMB members came to India in 2021 during the Covid lockdown, say police. They were arrested in a joint operation by MPATS and central intelligence agencies on Sunday.
During the initial round of interrogation, the four have spilled the beans on their travel route and how border touts operate. "They must have entered through the Benapole border crossing, which is known as the 'south-west transit point' and most commonly used by touts as the 'safest' route to India," an officer said.
One of them lived in Assam for some time and another in Uttar Pradesh. Police will take them to all their previous addresses for a detailed probe. As a standard cross-border trafficking practice, these JMB members laid low in border villages for a month before being sent to Bhopal via cities in Bihar and UP.
"This network operates on a demand-and-supply basis with touts on either side of the border. Most of the agents are in Dhaka, with their associates in villages located near the border," the officer said.
A few years ago, the BSF had carried out a study titled 'Human Trafficking: Modus Operandi of Touts on Indo-Bangladesh Border' which found that thousands of Bangladeshi girls are trafficked to India every year. The 913 km-long South Bengal border is susceptible to the maximum trans-border crime, human trafficking and smuggling of cattle and narcotics, officers say.
Lured by the promise of a better life in India, these trafficked women were pushed into brothels, dance bars, massage parlours and domestic work. The BSF study says there is a network of touts in Bangladesh, stretching from Dhaka to the last village in the border districts. There are agents and sub-agents who have contacts with people in border villages.
