BISWANATH: Assam Police was successful in arresting 17 Bangladeshi nationals from a remote area in Assam's Biswanath district for misusing Indian visa norms.
Assam DGP Bhaskar Jyoti Mahanta in a statement said that all these 17 Bangladeshi nationals are on tourist visas but they did not visit a single place of attraction in Assam, their sole motive to come to Assam was to carry out religious preaching and meetings which is against the visa norms of the country.
"They have been arrested for violating the visa norms. It is not that they were carrying out radicalization of youth in Assam but according to the Indian visa norms, no one can hold religious meetings in the country when they are on a tourist visa to the country." DGP Mahanta added.
According to reports, all 17 Bangladeshi nationals were on a travel spree as they visited Ajmer Sharif in Rajasthan, and then they visited some areas in Cooch Behar in West Bengal before entering Assam.
Biswanath district Superintendent of Police Navin Singh in a statement said, "There is no tourist attraction in Biswanath so when we got the news of these foreigners in the area, we suspected their motives and accordingly arrested them. They belong to a particular sect and were led by one Syed Ashraful Alam. All 17 of them did not enter Assam on the same date, they came in batches so as to avoid suspicion by the police".
Singh also added that all 17 of them were holding religious meetings for the last two to three days in a remote area called Baghmari which comes under Jinjia Police Station.
"They are the members of a particular sect and their leader (Dharmaguru) is also part of this group. We first detained them and verified at the police station and found that they entered India via Cooch Behar on various dates from August so as to avoid any suspicion" Singh said in a statement.
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