Sleuths: IS had extortion plan

Kolkata: A day before the police custody of suspected IS operative Abu Al-Musa Al-Bangali alias Mohd Masiuddin alias Musa comes to an end, the CID has claimed that it has found certain similarities in the manner in which this Bengal module in-charge and the India head and his "boss" Shafi Armar alias Yousuf al Hindi were operating. conduct themselves.
However, it's the failure to trace the Bangladeshi recruit of IS - Md Suleman, who worked closely with Musa - whose links in the Rajshahi professor murder in Bangladesh is slowly emerging - that is keeping the security agencies worried. Suleman's connection with the Rajshahi professor murder is also emerging.
CID said that the Bengal module had three specific jobs - carry out an attack on a south Kolkata businessman to "spread the IS terror", arrange money through extortion to provide a safe base for its recruits in Bengal and ensure that the IS can make in-roads in the city and four districts of the state.
The module had, with the help of Armar, organised itself under the nomenclature 'Janud ul Khilafa al Hind' to gather resources and arrange logistics for terror activities to be undertaken in various centres in India. Musa, along with his two associates Md Kalu and Amin, had identified vulnerable youth, radicalised them to fight for IS and arranged their meetings at centres like Metiabruz and Malda to discuss the attacks conspiracy.
Musa had met Bangladeshi IS terrorist from Nababganj, Md Suleman, and another operative, code-named Bagh 2, in Malda and Metiabruz earlier this year under instructions from Armar to finalize the list of potential targets. "The idea was to carry out lone wolf attacks on those who dared to defy the IS presence as well as shut up certain liberals - almost on the same lines as Bangladesh.," claimed a source.
Musa's questioning for the past two days led investigators to believe that the accused was in constant touch with a number of youths from the state even as he took orders from Suleman. Investigators believe the recovery of a 13 inch machete (the one he bought in Kolkata) and another 15 inch sword from his hideout at Tiruppur were signs that he was preparing for a targeted killing - in lines with the attacks on several Bangladeshi bloggers in the past one year.
Not only did the IS make their speech available in Bengali since 2015, but in the last one year, there has been a huge recovery of IS leaning posters from the bordering villages in Nadia, Malda and Murshidabad. Though the district police are tight-lipped about the recovery, according to a report by the central agencies, 147 posters have been recovered from 20 villages, of which 11 are in Murshidabad, three in Malda and six are in Nadia. The posters say Mughalistan (or Mughalstan) is the name of an independent homeland proposed for the Muslims of India.