New Delhi, 24th May 2023: The NIA Special Court, Guwahati, on Tuesday convicted another accused in a conspiracy case related to the formation of a module of Hizbul Mujahideen (HM), a banned terrorist organisation, in Assam.

The accused, Md. Saidul Alam of district Hojai, Assam, has been sentenced to five years of rigorous imprisonment with fine.

Five persons were earlier chargesheeted by NIA in case RC-08/2018/NIA-GUW on 11th March 2019, and two of them, identified as Md. Sahnawaj Alom @ Shahnawaj and Md. Omar Faruque @ Omar Faruk, were convicted by the NIA Court on 23rd December 2022.

NIA investigations have revealed that the three convicted accused had conspired with one Kamruj Zaman to establish a HM module in Assam. During 2017-2018, they had organized a series of meetings in various mosques, such as Milonpur Masjid, Islampur Masjid and Solmari Masjid, in and around Jamunamukh area. The meetings were used to spread the banned outfit’s hardcore fundamentalist ideology, with speeches about alleged atrocities and Jihad. Youth attending these meetings were told about the need to raise a module of HM for committing terrorist acts in response to the alleged atrocities etc.

Kamruj, Shahnawaz and Omar had conspired to raise funds for procurement of arms and ammunition. Omar, alongwith another accused Jaynal Uddin, provided logistic support. To keep their communications a secret, Kamruj Zaman and Saidul Alam had also installed the Blackberry messenger (BBM) App on their mobile sets. Kamruj had used this app to stay in touch with Hizbul Mujahideen cadres in Jammu & Kashmir.

Further investigations revealed that Saidul, alongwith Kamruj, Sahnawaz and Omar, had also conspired to unleash bomb blasts and armed attacks on innocent civilians in the non-Muslim localities of Lumding and Hojai on Dussehra eve. They had also planned to procure arms and ammunition for these attacks.

The case was originally registered at P.S. Jamunamukh, District Hojai, Assam, vide FIR No. 124/2018 under various sections of IPC and UA(P) Act. The NIA had re-registered the case as RC-08/2018/NIA-GUW on 5th October 2018.