Arrested Musa tries to kill prison official for ‘jihad’

Kolkata: Arrested ISIS suspect Mohammed Masihuddin alias Musa, who had allegedly planned to carry out an attack at Mother House, the Missionaries of Charity headquarters in Kolkata to target foreign national, tried to kill a prison official for “jihad” inside the Alipore Central Jail on Sunday morning. The injured — Gokul Chandra Dey — is a middle-aged jail warder.

He went to call Musa at his cell during ‘Lock Out,’ a routine session which allows the prisoners to go out in a compound on the prison premises after the day starts, said director general of police (correctional services) Arun Kumar Gupta. Mr Dey has been posted for the job for the past two years.

Mr Gupta added, “As the jail warder asked Musa to come out at around 8 am, Musa made some ‘jihadi’ comments towards his fellow prisoners to incite them. As the jail warden intervened, he pushed him off to the ground and hit him with a piece of stone. He slit his throat with a small but sharp iron piece used in PWD works in prison.” With deep injuries in throat, Mr Dey was rescued by his colleagues.

He was rushed to SSKM Hospital from where he was later shifted to Calcutta Medical Research Institute later. Mr Gupta said, “His condition is stable now. A case under section 307 (attempt to murder) has been initiated against Musa. An investigation is underway.” Senior prison officials visited the jail later.

Musa has been shifted from his cell no 2 in block 12 to a separate one.

During interrogation he confessed to plotting to kill Mr Dey as part of his Jihadi activities, sources revealed.

Originally from Labhpur in Birbhum, the 25-year-old terror suspect was arrested by the criminal investigation department from the Burdwan railway station in July of 2016 on charges of radicalising youths to join the ISIS.

He also reportedly had links to Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), whose leader Abu Suleiman had met Musa at the latter’s sister’s wedding in March 2015.

Later, the National Investigation Agency took him in its custody to unearth the ISIS network and its plots in the state.

Musa was grilled by the Rapid Action Batallion of Bangladesh and the Federal Bureau of Investigation over ISIS network.

 He has been lodged at the high security prison over a year. In December last year, the NIA in a chargesheet accused Musa of plotting an attack on the Mother House as a ‘soft target’ to kill the American, British and Russian citizens — who visit the place on AJC Bose Road in south Kolkata to pay homage to its founder Mother Teresa —— as a retaliation to the offensive against the ISIS in the Middleeast.

Musa came under the scanner of Indian investigation agencies after his e-mails and calls were traced to Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Syria. According to the NIA, he stayed in touch with several ISIS operatives, including leader Shafi Arman, in Syria through Facebook and Twitter, and was entrusted with building an ISIS module and recruitment in West Bengal.