Guwahati, Oct. 30: The Northeast unit of the Bajrang Dal has called a 12-hour Assam bandh from 5am tomorrow to press for a ban on AIUDF, arrest of its chief Badruddin Ajmal and sealing of madarsas for their alleged links with “jihadi groups”.
The Assam units of the BJP, the Vishva Hindu Parishad , the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad and the Hindu Jagaran Mancha have extended their support to the bandh. Emergency services have been exempted from its purview.
There have been protests across Assam since a local channel aired a report beamed by a New Delhi-based news channel quoting an IB report that the All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) and Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind were allegedly sending youths from Dhubri district to Bangladesh for jihadi training.
Lakhi Gogoi, the president of Bajrang Dal’s Northeast unit, said here today that they would soon submit a report to Union home minister Rajnath Singh and National Security Guard chief J.N. Choudhury about the growing activities of fundamentalist groups and the involvement of the AIUDF.
He said they had been complaining about the growing activities of Muslim fundamentalist groups in Assam but the state government had termed them communal. The recent arrest of six jihadis from Barpeta had proved the veracity of their complaint, he added.
The group said it would submit a memorandum to Rajnath Singh, seeking to bring Ajmal and all the 18 AIUDF legislators within the purview of NIA investigation. “We want the madarsas to be sealed and their anti-national activities probed. We will also meet the Election Commission seeking a ban on the AIUDF for its jihadi links,” Lakhi Gogoi said.
All Koch-Rajbongshi Students’ Union president Biswajit Ray alleged that jihadi elements had widened their base in Assam because of inaction of police and its criminal investigation department and illegal immigration from Bangladesh.
Assam police today said an operation was on to arrest those having links with Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB).
“We had received some information following the blast at Burdwan in Bengal and the subsequent arrest of six members of JMB sleeper cell in Barpeta and are accordingly carrying out operations,” Assam additional director-general of police (law and order) R.M. Singh said today.
Ajmal has denied the charges and termed it a political conspiracy to defame the party ahead of the 2016 Assembly election.
An AIUDF delegation today submitted a memorandum to Assam governor J.B. Patnaik, urging him to order an inquiry to unearth the authenticity of the news about the AIUDF’s reported link with jihadi elements. The party said the news was “absolutely baseless, false and politically motivated”.
“We challenge the authority of the news and we sincerely believe that the whole game plan was manufactured to pollute and damage the existing peace and harmony of the society,” the memorandum said.
AIUDF general secretary Aminul Islam told reporters that they had decided to file civil and criminal suits against the news channel.
He said a party delegation, including Ajmal, had left for New Delhi today to meet President Pranab Mukherjee, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Rajnath Singh to request an inquiry into the authenticity of the news.
