(Top) Shafiqul at the CID headquarters in Calcutta. (Above) The retired army driver’s house in Malda from where he was held. Pictures by Bishwarup Dutta and Surajit Roy

Jan. 14: A retired army driver and an explosives carrier he allegedly sheltered had visited Dhaka last month to meet a Lashkar-e-Toiba operative, investigators claimed today.

The claim contradicts the version of the arrested driver yesterday that he had met the courier, also in custody, for the first time on Sunday by chance.

However, the retired naik’s fellow-villagers were sceptic-al of the investigators’ claims and painted the picture of a good Samaritan.

The meeting between the driver, Haji Akhtar Hussain, and the Lashkar leader in Dhaka was organised by the courier, Shafiqul, CID sources said.

Shafiqul has been brought to the CID headquarters in Calcutta while a Murshidabad court has remanded Hussain in police custody for 13 days.

Hussain was to have helped Shafiqul set up a tyre shop near the Sukna army camp in Siliguri so that the Bangladeshi could track troop movements, the sources said without explaining how such information could have been used.

Shafiqul’s immediate boss, Taimur Bhai alias AK, had facilitated the deal, the sources said. It was decided that Hussain would be paid Rs 20,000 for the tyre shop. Shafiqul apparently returned to Malda on January 3 and stayed at Hussain’s until his arrest.

Two mobile phones and seven SIM cards belonging to Shafiqul were found with Hussain. CID deputy inspector-general S.N. Gupta said he believed the two had known each other for a long time.

The CID sources said Taimur had been Shafiqul’s mentor since the two were arrested along with five others — including three Pakistanis — by Delhi police from Uttar Pradesh’s Bareilly in February 1998 and sent to Tihar Jail.

“While in Tihar, Taimur convinced Shafiqul about Lashkar’s ideology and completed the indoctrination initiated by a madarsa teacher in 1996,” a CID officer said.

Taimur had helped Class V dropout Shafiqul pick up computer basics in Tihar. After their release on bail in 2003, Taimur opened an email account for Shafiqul.

In Hussain’s Kauamari village in Malda’s Harishchandrapur, disbelief greeted the CID claims. The local Congress gram panchayat member, Sakir Hossain, said the retired army driver had gone for Haj in 1995. “A person who completes Haj can’t be bad.”

“If anyone fell seriously ill, he would arrange for a vehicle to take the person to hospital. We always ran to him whenever we planned to hold a cultural programme,” he added.

The CPM’s Mujibur Rehman echoed him. “The police had told me he was wanted for questioning and would be released soon,” Rehman said.

However, few villagers have visited the family since the arrest. Hussain’s wife Anwara Bibi said she was scared. “I don’t know when he will return home to me and my three unmarried daughters.”