Bhatkal, Tunda shared resources, says official

Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) member Abdul Karim Tunda and Indian Mujahideen (IM) co-founder Yasin Bhatkal, who were arrested recently, might have been using the same sleeper cells and the fake currency network along the Indo-Bangladesh border, agencies probing the cases suspect.

“There is enough evidence to show that LeT and IM worked hand in hand. Their links were so symbiotic that they even used the same sleeper cells. Both used the same network to dispatch fake Indian currency notes across the border. They might have even shared a common base at Rajshahi in Bangladesh,” a senior official from the Kolkata Police’s Special Task Force (STF) said.

While Tunda depended on his close aide Muhammad Alauddin, who is said to be 55-year-old, according to police records, Bhatkal’s fake currency and money laundering operations were handled by Nata Abdulla, who shuttled between Nepal and Bangladesh.
Alauddin, who was arrested at Karandighi in North Dinajpur earlier this year, reportedly admitted before his interrogators to having maintained close liaison with Abdulla.
Sources said it was also Alauddin, who was interrogated again following the arrests of Tunda and Bhatkal, who pointed in the direction of the two terror outfits sharing resources and sometimes even couriers.

While Alauddin claimed that the sleeper cells as well as the fake currency network are actually run at the behest of the Pakistan counter-intelligence agency ISI, he said that much of the operations are run from Bengal due to a mostly unguarded border.
DH News Service