The authorities of western Assam’s Bongaigaon district on Wednesday demolished a madrassa allegedly linked to the al-Qaeda.
Eight bulldozers were used to bring down the madrassa, the third since the arrest of 37 people found to be direct or indirect members of the al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent and Bangladesh-based terror group Ansarul Bangla Team (ABT), a month ago. The arrested included an imam of a mosque and a few madrassa teachers, some allegedly involved in financial transactions for ABT.
The demolition followed the arrest of Mufti Hafizur Rahman, who had been teaching at the Markazul Ma-Arif Quariayana Madarssa since 2018. He was arrested by the police of Goalpara district from the Jogighopa area.
The madrassa is in Bongaigaon district’s Kabaitary Part-IV village.
According to the Bongaigaon District Disaster Management Authority, an order to demolish the madrassa was issued on Tuesday as multiple activities with unspecified number of people were being carried out from the structure without necessary papers. The structure also appeared to be in a hazardous condition, it said.
The district police, which raided the madrassa on Tuesday, claimed to have found several objectionable items and documents from the structure. “Some 200 students staying at the madrassa were evacuated on Tuesday night,” a district police officer said.
On August 4, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said the police had busted at least five modules of ABT since March this year. While the mastermind of a module was arrested, the whereabouts of the others have not been known.
Claiming that Assam was becoming a hotbed for Islamist radicals, he said the terror trainers were technology-savvy and used sophisticated methods to brainwash young minds. Some of the “jihadists”, he said, were masquerading as imams of mosques or teachers of madrassas.
