GUWAHATI, Sept 7 � The Assam Police has taken the threat from dreaded terrorist outfit Al-Qaeda �very seriously� and all the forces and security agencies working in the State will launch a coordinated effort to thwart the attempts of the outfit to establish bases in the State, said Director General of Assam Police, Khagen Sarma.
Talking to The Assam Tribune, the DGP said such threats are never taken lightly, but till now, the police and security forces are not aware of the presence of any Al-Qaeda module in the State. �We do not know whether the threat is very imminent or not, but as the outfit has declared its intentions to establish bases in Assam, the threat is taken very seriously,� he said.
It may be mentioned that the Al-Qaeda recently released a video where it claimed that it would establish bases in South Asia and mentioned the states of Assam, Jammu and Kashmir and Gujarat as well as Myanmar and Bangladesh as the areas identified for establishing bases in the near future.
Sarma pointed out that at one point of time, Islamic outfits like Muslim United Liberation Front of Assam (MULFA), Muslim United Liberation Tigers of Assam (MULTA), Muslim Security Force etc., were active in the State, but those outfits are not active now. He further pointed out that the Harkat-ul-Mujaheedin (HUM) was also active in the State in the late 1990s, but the backbone of the outfit was broken following a series of arrests, while a number of its members also came overground. The leader of the Assam wing of HUM, who hailed from Rangiya area, managed to escape to Bangladesh and his whereabouts are not known.
The DGP revealed that from time to time, the police and security agencies come across reports of movements of modules of HUM and Lasker-e-Toiba (LeT) in Assam, while there were some reports of movements of elements of Indian Mujahedeen (IM) in the State. However, till date, there is no input about activities of any Al-Qaeda elements in Assam, he said.
Replying to a question, Sarma admitted that so far, outfits like Al-Qaeda, LeT and IM never worked together. �But outfits can start working together at any point of time and one should not take them lightly,� he added.
