Sitting amid the blackened remains of his home, 32-year-old Nikesh Gawali carefully broke open a half-melted plastic box with a screwdriver. His hands shook slightly, not out of fear, but out of hope. “I’m trying to find my daughter Aarti’s gold earrings,” he said quietly, still focused on the box. “She’s just five. I got them made recently after months of labour work.” The plastic box, warped and blackened by heat, was one of the few things left from his two-room house on the outskirts of Dhamangaon village . All around him lay ash, broken tin sheets and charred wooden beams. The walls had cracked under the heat and the front room’s tin roof had caved in completely. What remained was a blackened debris all around - almost nothing to suggest a home once stood there. Nikesh earns his living as an agricultural labourer, like many in the village. Work is uncertain and depends on the season. Those earrings weren’t just jewellery - they were a small dream, a reward for his hard work,...
Correlating the arrest of Ansar-Ul-Bangla team (ABT) member in Mumbai with increasing activities of the terrorist group in Maharashtra, the intelligence agencies have sounded a warning and alerted Maharashtra Police to keep close tab on the activities of Bangladesh nationals. The sleuths unearthed the methodology of the ultra that could be used by banned organisations to widen their network in the State. After careful analysis of the data and matching the same with internal inputs, the Maharashtra police disseminated specific inputs for follow-up action, said the sources.
ABT is a terrorist organisation in Bangladesh, implicated in crimes including some brutal attacks. The cadre of the ABT was arrested from Mumbai on September 2, 2022, which points towards increased activities of the banned terror organisation in Maharashtra, the alert stated.
The officials also warned that a considerable population of Bangladeshis has settled in various parts of Maharashtra and their activities are needed to be monitored properly.
The police official said that the outfit uses illegal migrant workers as its foot-soldiers and their network has penetrated so deep that their operatives are found in almost all parts of the country, including Maharashtra. According to the official, the law enforcement agencies have sharpened their focus on the Bangladeshi migrants living in Amravati, Akola, Nanded, Arurangabad, Pune and Mumbai region of the State. Similarly, the Government Railway Police (GRP) has been directed to watch out Kolkata and Assam bound trains as same are mostly used for commuting by the members of the terror organisations.
The terror group was banned in the year 2015 and is responsible for the killing of 20 commoners, secular, and minorities while seriously injuring another 39, says the data by the United States Department of Homeland Security, said the official.
The ABT has been frequently publishing kill-lists. These are mostly those who oppose radical Islam. In 2015, the year it was banned, the ABT published a list of 20 bloggers accusing them of being anti-Islam. The main message that it has been sending out to people in Bangladesh and India is to eradicate democracy, the official claimed.
Terror groups eyeing crypto to hoodwink police
A police official also cautioned about terrorist organisations are reportedly using advance financial technologies to keep its activities secret. To escape detection of law enforcement agencies, the ultras are sharpening their usage of technology to prevent trace of money trail and prevent suspicion on their financial transactions that are used to fund their cadres living in various parts.
The intel agency in a recent message tried to draw attention towards terrorist organisations exploring various new possibilities to spread terror messages for recruitment and for funding. The organsies are using advanced financial technologies like Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) to keep its activities secret. The NFTs are cryptographic assets on a block chain with unique identification codes and meta data that distinguish them from each other and it's hard to trace for even cyber forensic experts, the sources pointed out.
The counter terrorism strategy often focused on preventing financial transactions by tracking the transactions of terror funding organisations. However, the technology is likely to reduce the access to the transactions for law enforcement agencies, they claimed further.
When ‘The Hitavada’ contacted Nishith Mishra, Inspector General of Police (IGP), Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS), Maharashtra, he said, the issue of advance financial technologies could be used by terror group is being minutely studied. The ATS officials have in past discovered cryptocurrency applications in the mobile phones of accused allegedly engaged in the terror activities. Admitted that ultras are getting smarter by leveraging technology to hilt, at the same time, our sleuths to are experts in countering such new models of terror funding, Mishra asserted.
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