In Tripura, National Investigation Team (NIA) has conducted searches at multiple locations in Sonamura under Sepahijala district in connection with some Bangladeshi operatives’ activities as part of terror group Al-Qaeda’s conspiracy to destabilise India.

Official sources said the BSF and state police accompanied the NIA team during the search operations at UNC Nagar and NC Nagar under Sonamura police station in the district last evening. Also, the NIA had conducted extensive searches simultaneously at multiple locations across the country.

The crackdown at nine locations, linked with individuals suspected of supporting and funding the activities of the proscribed terrorist organisation Al-Qaida, in Jammu and Kashmir, Karnataka, West Bengal, Bihar, Tripura and Assam, NIA said in a press statement. In the operations, incriminating documents were recovered from the locations.

Those documents, the NIA said, revealed detailed banking transactions, digital devices including mobile phones, and other evidence related to terror funding activities. As per NIA investigations, the suspects whose premises were raided are sympathisers of a Bangladesh-based Al-Qaida network.

The searches were part of NIA’s ongoing investigations into a 2023 case pertaining to a conspiracy orchestrated by Bangladesh-based Al-Qaida operatives in collaboration with the arrested individuals. The conspiracy was aimed at propagating Al-Qaida’s terrorist activities and radicalising gullible youths in India.

In November last year, NIA had filed a chargesheet against five accused, including four Bangladeshi nationals, identified as Mohd. Sojibmiyan, Munna Khalid Ansari @ Munna Khan, Azarul Islam @Jahangir or Aakash Khan, Abdul Latif @Mominul Ansari. The fifth accused, Farid, is an Indian national.

NIA investigations into their antecedents had revealed that the accused had procured forged documents to carry out their activities covertly. They were actively involved in radicalising and motivating vulnerable Muslim youth in India, spreading Al-Qaida’s violent ideology, collecting funds, and transferring these funds to Al-Qaida.