India: Reviving Islamist Threat In Assam – Analysis

By Priyanka Devi Kshetrimayum

Assam which for long had been threatened by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)-backed Islamist extremist groups, is once again facing renewed threats from such groupings – both operating out of Pakistani and Bangladeshi soil. Global Islamist terrorist formations also create security challenges.

A majority of the Islamist militant groups in Assam were founded between 1990 and 1996 with the prime objective of safeguarding the ‘overall interests’ of the minority Muslim communities in the region.

On October 5, 2024, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) arrested 10 operatives of Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) from the Goalpara and Hojai Districts of Assam, during a massive crackdown in the JeM conspiracy case. The arrests included Sheikh Sultan Salah Uddin Ayubi aka Ayubi, from Krishnai in Goalpara District. He was arrested for his role in conspiracy case RC-13/2024/NIA/DLI. During the operation, NIA seized several incriminating documents, electronic devices, pamphlets and magazines, and is examining further leads.

The Chief Minister of Assam, Himanta Biswa Sarma, explained that the arrests “bring home” the reality that Islamist extremist groups are becoming a bigger menace in Assam, and that the state's indigenous population could face difficulties in the years to come if the extremist Islamist doctrine persists in Assam. 

According to partial data compiled by the South Asian Terrorism Portal (SATP), at least 14 operatives of different Islamist terrorist groups – JeM, 10; and Ansar-al-Islam (AaI)/Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT) and Islamic State (IS), two each – have been arrested in 2024 (data till November 2, 2024). In the corresponding period of 2023, at least 11 such operatives – Popular Front of India (PFI) and ABT, five each; and one (group not identified) – were arrested. Details of the remaining arrests in 2024, apart from the incident of October 5, are given below:

May 13: Assam Police arrested two operatives of the AaI – Bahar Mia (30) and Rasel Mia (40), both residents of Bangladesh – from Guwahati in the Kamrup (Metro) District of Assam. The duo was illegally staying in India without passports, had obtained Indian documents through fraudulent means, and was working to spread a terrorist network in Assam and India.

March 20: The Assam Police’s Special Task Force (STF) arrested two high-ranking leaders of IS, Haris Farooqi aka Harish Ajmal Farukhi and Anurag Singh aka Rehan, in an operation in the Dharmasala area of Dhubri District in Assam. They were arrested after they entered Assam from Bangladesh. Farooqi, identified as the ‘head’ of IS in India, and Singh, his associate, were planning sabotage activities after entering India. Both were involved in recruitment, terrorist funding, and plotting attacks using improvised explosive devices (IEDs), and face charges from NIA, Delhi and Lucknow Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS), and other agencies.

Over the past several years, transborder Islamist terrorist groups, mainly based in Bangladesh, including Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) and AaI, have been trying to establish their bases in Assam.

On March 4, 2022, the Special Branch of the Assam Police arrested five people, including a Bangladesh national, Saiful Islam aka Haroon Rashid aka Mohammed Suman, for their alleged links with AaI. They were arrested from Barpeta, Howly and Kalgachia, all in Barpeta District. Saiful Islam had illegally entered India and was working as a teacher in the Dhakalipara masjid. Saiful Islam had successfully indoctrinated and motivated the four others to join the module, with a view to developing the Barpeta District of Assam as a base for jihadi activities of Al-Qaeda and its related organisations.

Chief Minister Sarma had then disclosed that the militants of AaI modules arrested in the state in 2022 were using sophisticated peer-to-peer encrypted chat apps for communication. Further, he had also disclosed that during the Coronovairus-19 (Covid-19) years the AaI modules were training cadres in bomb making in Barpeta District. He had added that Assam had become a “hotbed for jihadi activities”.

Similarly, NIA arrested two operatives of the AaI module in Barpeta District, Akbar Ali and Abul Kalam Azad, on April 5, 2023, and filed a charge sheet against them on August 29, 2023, for conspiring and plotting to execute terrorist activities. NIA said that the radicalisation and mobilisation of Muslims were done through the module’s Bangladeshi handlers – Zakir and Mehboor Rahman.

Islamist radical group PFI, which the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (UMHA) pronounced an “unlawful association” on September 28, 2022 for conspiring to establish Islamic rule in India by 2047, with its main roots in Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Karnataka, has also paved its way into Assam. However, there were no PFI-linked arrests in 2024, though three incidents of arrest linked to the group were recorded in 2023:

May 17: Assam Police arrested one PFI operative, Abdul Razzaq Ali, from the Nagarbera area of Kamrup District.

April 23: Two PFI operatives, Saiful Islam and Shafiqul Islam, were arrested from the Dhubri District of Assam. The arrested operatives taught in a madrasa(Islamic Seminary), Al-Jamiatul Asia Lil Banat Panbari, of Dhubri.

April 8: Two PFI operatives, Zakir Hussain and Samad Ahmed, were arrested along with one operative of the group’s student wing, Campus Front of India (CFI), Jahidul Islam Mirdha, from the Barpeta Railway Station area in Barpeta District. Zakir Hussain served as the ‘secretary’ of the Assam state committee of PFI, while Samad Ahmed was the ‘president’ of the PFI Assam State Committee, and Jahidul Islam was the ‘president’ of the CFI Assam Committee.

Further, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Guwahati student, Touseef Ali Farooqui (20) – in the 4th-year at the Bioscience – was arrested on March 23, 2024, in Kamrup District, while trying to leave the country in an attempt to join IS.

With the arrests of operatives from various terrorist groups, such as JeM, AaI, IS, AQIS, and PFI, it is evident that Islamist radicalisation has found some foothold in Assam.

In a press release dated October 5, 2024, on the arrest of JeM operatives, the NIA observed, "The suspects were engaged in radicalising individuals associated with JeM, and were engaged in disseminating terrorist-related propaganda, and radicalising and recruiting youth into the Jamaat outfit inspired by JeM. These suspects were involved in motivating youth into committing violent terror attacks across India."

An NIA official also informed The Assam Tribune on October 26, 2024, that terrorist groups had been using digital or online social media platforms to recruit and radicalise young people from Assam. These tactics are comparable to those used by Islamist terrorist groups based in Pakistan, as well as Khalistani groups.

In this regard, an unnamed senior intelligence officer observed, "With the inroads and improvement of information technology, terrorist outfits do not have to send their own people to India, but they can induct youths into their fold by sitting thousands of miles away."

According to official inputs, radical Islamist terrorist groups have likely increased their recruitment efforts in the aftermath of the August 5, 2024, coup and the subsequent chaos in Bangladesh. Indian intelligence agencies have reported that the Bangladesh-based terrorist group AaI may try to establish a presence in Assam and West Bengal. Reports indicate that a prominent AaI leader, Abdullah Talah, was working to spread AaI influence in northeastern India. Moreover, Jashimuddin Rahmani, another prominent AaI leader was released by the interim government of Bangladesh at a time when AaI has been attempting to create a jihadi network with the aid of sleeper cells, especially in Assam and Tripura in India. 

As SAIR noted earlier, a majority of the Islamist extremist and terrorist groups in Assam were founded between 1990 and 1996, with the prime objective of safeguarding the ‘overall interests’ of the minority Muslim communities in the region. According to SATP, at least 20 Islamist terrorist formations have operated in Assam at different periods. 

Meanwhile, the surge in infiltration attempts by Bangladeshi nationals and Rohingyas into Assam, after the coup in Bangladesh, also creates additional potential risks. Chief Minister Sarma tweeted in October that around 130 individuals, who were attempting to enter Assam illegally from Bangladesh in the preceding two months, following the political turmoil that erupted in Bangladesh, had been intercepted by the Assam Police. In a video message on his social media platforms, Sarma announced that the process of establishing 12 Border Outposts in proximity to the Indo-Bangla border was underway to bolster coordination with the Central agencies. 

The attempt to re-establish Islamist terrorist groups’ bases in Assam and the demographic infiltration by foreign elements, particularly those from Bangladesh, have raised renewed concerns about security in Assam in particular, and northeastern India at large.

• Priyanka Devi Kshetrimayum
  Research Associate, Institute for Conflict Management