West Bengal (Islamist/Other Conflicts): Timeline (Terrorist Activities) -2003

A National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) 'second lieutenant' Sumit Basumatary was arrested from Samuktola Bazaar, near Siliguri in Jalpaiguri district of West Bengal on January 2-evening. Read less...

According to a media report, Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar said. in Kolkata, on January 4 the proscribed National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT) and the All Tripura Tiger Force (ATTF) had set up 51 hideouts in Bangladesh for armed training. However, he gave no further details. Read less...

According to media reports, the Railway Protection Force (RPF) recovered three packets of detonators lying unattended from the New Jalpaiguri railway station, in West Bengal, on January 9-morning. According to experts, the recovered detonators, though by themselves are not dangerous, have extensive use in the making of explosives. It may be recollected that in June 1999, during the Kargil war, a major blast had occurred at this station killing nine, mostly Army troops. Read less...

Police in Kolkata arrested an Al Qaeda terrorist with links to the Taliban militia, who was operating in Jammu and Kashmir for the last six months. He is reported to have made significant disclosures during interrogation about the outfit’s network in the Kashmir Valley. The Myanmarese-born Fazle Karim alias Abu Fuzi was arrested from Howrah railway station on the basis of specific inputs provided by intelligence agencies of the Union government. According to the preliminary interrogation report of Fuzi, the Al Qaeda’s network in Kashmir, Bangladesh and Afghanistan has also come to light. Fuzi claimed to have met Osama bin Laden twice and also interacted frequently with Laden’s close associates before the United States launched attacks on Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. Fuzi was trained at camps in Afghanistan in 1995-96 and had left that country before the US raids and reportedly took shelter in Bangladesh’s Chittagong district from where he crossed over to Kolkata and later reached the Kashmir valley. Fuzi reportedly told interrogators that he came into contact with two higher-ranking officers of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s external intelligence agency, in Chittagong, who had assigned him the task of creating an Al Qaeda network in the Kashmir valley. Read less...