ILLEGAL CATTLE TRADE FUNDING TERROR BY U.P.GOVERNMENT

IIlegal catte trade funding terror:  UP govt

What has for past several years appeared an innocuous even if an illegal side “business”, namely cattle trade, could be a source of terror funding, say top UP government officials.  A substantial part of the Rs. 15,000 crore illegal trade is being funnelled to fund terror, officials said.

The connection between cattle smuggling and big crime first came to light when one Mizanur Rehman turned out to be the key accused in the kidnapping of Kolkata-based proprietor of Khadim Shoes, Partho Burman.  Mizanur’s younger brother, Azizur Rehman Sardar, 22, was found to be a Harkat-ul-Jihad-e-Islami (HuJI) activist serving time in Lucknow jail.

Mizanur was also known to be the trusted aide of HuJI area commander Jalaluddin, alias Babu Bhai, who too is in Lucknow jail.  A part of the Rs. 4 crore ransom in the Burman abduction case was suspected to have been diverted to Omar Sheikh, one of the alleged killers of US journalist Daniel Pearl in Pakistan.

Azizur Rehman is in the slammer for ferrying arms and explosives from Bangladesh to India (his last cache included 2 kg RDX, 10 grenades and 10 detonators).  Before that, however, this West Bengal resident  operated as a cattle smuggler along the India-Bangladesh border.  So do his other three associates arrested with him in June 2007.  Azizur is one of the hundreds of foot soldiers in cross border terror network who engages in cattle smuggling during “lean period”.

Unlike fake Indian currency notes (FICN), narcotics and arms peddling, cattle smuggling is the least known and supposedly least glamorous terror funding tactic, largely below the intelligence scanner.  It’s also a highly dependable means of sustaining “peripherals” and recruits who form the most active chain in the terror link.  The thriving racket through, as a source puts it, “68 smuggling corridors and 149 sensitive villages dotting the West Bengal border along the 1,485 km long India-Bangladesh border” has been worrying UP and West Bengal governments for over a decade.

The point was brought home by the animal welfare division of the ministry of environment and forest.  In a letter forwarded to the ministry of home affairs, the department highlighted “serious problem of hawala transactions in lieu of smuggled cattle in Chittagong area”.  The money, the letter emphasised, “funds Islamic terror groups and their sleeper agents in the country….National security demands that cattle smuggling to Bangladesh end at once.”  Based on these inputs, MHA has alerted state governments.

UP government had shown similar concern over the issue two years ago.  On August 26, 2006, then director-general of police Bua Singh quoting secretary, border management, MHA, had claimed in a circular that “animals smuggled from West Bengal border number as high as 50 lakh to 60 lakh a year”.  It also noted that “officers in Bangladesh regularize this illegal smuggling of cattle by levying 500 to 1,000 takas of penalty per animal and thereafter hand over its formal possession to smugglers.”

The trade, sources claim, could be generating Rs. 14,000 crore to Rs. 15,000 crore per annum.  The operations involve a strong funnel-shaped network running through Rajasthan, Punjab, HP, Haryana, Uttarkhand and parts of MP.  UP forms neck of the funnel and Bihar its stem which finally opens into West Bengal.