Bihar Police have issued a high alert in the state after the Voice of Khorasan, an online propaganda magazine published by Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) carried a photograph of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. ISKP is an affiliate of the Islamic State Islamic terrorist group, which is active in South Asia and Central Asia.
The alert comes in the wake of a statement issued by Ameer Ghaza Khalid Ibrahim, the new interim com
mander of Ansar Ghazwatul Hind, an Al-Qaeda affiliate active in Kashmir. In his statement issued on Telegram channel “TearsofUmma0”, Khalid Ibrahim has referred to the “centuries old war” and exhorted Indian Muslim youth to “differentiate between their friends and enemies”.
“The Muslim youth of India must realize in time that those responsible for their pain and suffering are not just cow priests but a whole system is at war against them, including the Brahmin government of India, the courts and their police and forces. Sooner the Muslims living in India realize that this war against them is a part of centuries old war, the sooner they will be able to differentiate between their friends and enemies,” reads the statement issued by the Kashmir-based Islamist terror group.
The Intelligence Bureau (IB) is in contact with Bihar intelligence agency and Bihar Police in respect of the development. According to well-placed sources, the IB is verifying the source of the statement.
The Khorasan Dairy on 14 July had in its Twitter handle shared the cover of the Voice of Khorasan carrying the photograph of PM Modi with a montage of riot photographs and blood splattered around just below his photograph. “Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) has the Indian PM Narendra Modi on its cover in its latest version of Voice of Khorasan magazine, calling for attacks against Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The assumed audience for the article is Indian youth,” read the tweet. According to its twitter handle, The Khorasan Dairy is a “non-partisan, journalists-run platform, which shares real-time information and analysis not propaganda”.
With such threats coming close on the heels of the Popular Front of India (PFI) module bust in Patna, IB has put security agencies on high alert, following which Bihar Police have directed all district SPs, including the SP of Patna, “to take all necessary precautionary and security measures to avoid any untoward incident”.
According to sources, firebrand leaders like Giriraj Singh, Ashwini Chaube, Sanjay Jaiswal and Haribhushan Thakur, among others, are on target. The Union Ministry of Home Affairs, in charge of internal security, has already provided Y and Z category security to over a dozen BJP leaders in the state. The state Police Headquarters has also directed them to beef up the security provided to BJP leaders in the state.
The state police is also beefing up security arrangements at Bodh Gaya Buddhist temple complex. According to sources, an additional company of the police force will be deployed at the World Heritage site and high-range CCTVs will be installed to keep the complex under surveillance.
It may be recalled that a series of bomb blasts took place around the Bodh Gaya complex in 2013 injuring five persons. The National Investigating Agency had linked Indian Mujahideen to the bombings.