A madrasa teacher and a contractor have been arrested in Assam for suspected links with the terror group Al Qaida in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS).

Police said a 30-year-old madrasa teacher — Hafizur Rahman Mufti — was arrested in Bongaigaon district on Friday morning based on leads provided by one of the two imams arrested from Goalpara district last Saturday.

On Wednesday, Goalpara police arrested the contractor, Abdus Subahan, 30, with the help of Bongaigaon police, also for suspected links with the AQIS.

Founded in 2014, AQIS is an affiliate of the terror group Al Qaida with its members believed to be active in Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Myanmar, and Afghanistan. Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT), based out of Bangladesh with “affiliation” to the AQIS, was banned by Bangladesh in 2015.

“Both Mufti and Subahan were recruited for the AQIS by the imam (Abdus Subahan, 43) arrested last Saturday. Mufti is a madrasa teacher while Abdus is a small-time contractor. We have arrested four persons for links with AQIS in a week. These arrests have revealed we have a lot of things to do and a lot of things to unearth,” Goalpara superintendent of police, V.V. Rakesh Reddy, told The Telegraph.

The Goalpara police had arrested Abdus Subahan, the imam of Tinkunia Shantipur Masjid and Jalaluddin Sheikh, the imam of Tilapara Natun Masjid, last Saturday.

The arrested imams had “active” links with Barpeta and Morigaon modules of AQIS, and the ABT in Assam, police sources claimed. The Goalpara module in lower Assam was the sixth such module to have been busted by the police since March. Goalpara is 140km west of Guwahati.

The police’s ongoing crackdown has led to the arrest of about 34 suspects in the state since March, mostly from Barpeta bordering Goalpara, including the arrest of the founder of a madrasa (Mufti Mustafa, 32) in Morigaon district on July 27.

To keep track of imams and religious teachers, the state government made it mandatory for them to register themselves on a portal being developed by the state government.

Besides registration, residents will also have to inform the police if they want to hire any imam and madrasa teachers.

There is only private madrasa in the state after over 600 government-run madrasas were converted to regular schools in 2021.

The imams were also involved in “providing” logistic support as well as sheltering now-absconding Bangladeshi nationals, the police said.