Intelligence Bureau issues alert as Bihar BJP leaders face threat from Islamic State Khorasan Province

The Intelligence Bureau (IB) has asked the Bihar police to increase the security of BJP leaders in the state after developing inputs that terrorists affiliated with Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP), the Indian sub-continent branch of Islamic State (IS) has asked its supporters to target BJP leaders.

The said inputs are based on basis of content shared by a Twitter handle run by unnamed journalists in which they had tweeted the cover picture of the latest propaganda magazine of ISKP, “The voice of Khorasan” which has the picture of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and have called for the attack on BJP politicians.

The journalists who run this Twitter account have stated that the assumed audience of the magazine is the ‘Indian youth’ "Khorasan" refers to a historical region covering parts of modern-day Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The security agencies have also come across a group on the Telegram messaging app run by the supporters of Al Qaeda (AQ) in the Indian sub-continent (AQIS) in which a leader of AQIS, Ameer Ghazi Khalid, the head of ‘Ansar Ghazwatul Hind’, the branch of AQ that is responsible for India, asking Muslim youths to wage a war against India.

An official communication to SPs of all districts of Bihar, including Railways, was sent by the SP of the Special Branch of Bihar police on 15 July in this matter.

The same was also shared with other relevant officials including, the Anti-terror squad, Special Security etc.

While the letter does not mention the names of any BJP leaders, security officials have tightened the security cover around Union Ministers Giriraj Singh, Ashwini Choubey and a few others, due to their vocal stand against what is perceived as “Islamic terrorism”.

Both the union ministers are equipped with Z-level security.

Earlier last week, the Patna police had claimed to bust a terror module that was being run by the extremist Islamic organization, Popular Front of India (PFI) and arrested many Muslim individuals who were allegedly a part of this terror module.