Kolkata, Kolkata Police on Monday said that its special task force (STF) has arrested two linkmen of Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) from Mathurapur in West Bengal's South 24 Parganas district during the last 48 hours.

With these fresh arrests, the total number of AQIS or linkmen arrested by the STF during the last four months has reached eight. Apart from that in September, the STF sleuths also arrested a suspected spy of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), from Kalimpong, the hill resort city in the northern sector of West Bengal.

City police sources said that on Saturday evening, the STF sleuths first arrested Azizul Haque from his residence of Mathurapur for his suspected links with AQIS. From Azizul, the sleuths came to know about Maniruddin Khan, who acted as the principal logistics agent in the area for AQIS as well as for Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT), an outlawed outfit in neighbouring Bangladesh.

City police sources said that Maniruddin Khan (20) was mainly responsible for arranging for fake Indian identity cards, mobile SIM cards, bank accounts and providing similar logistics support for AQIS activists coming from Bangladesh. He was also responsible for spreading the message of AQIS through social media among the local youths and luring them to join the banned outfit.

The series of the arrests of AQIS activists in different pockets of West Bengal started since August 17 this year, when the STF sleuths arrested two outfit linkmen, Raqib Sarkar and Kazi Ahshanullah from the Shashan village under Barasat block in North 24 Parganas district.

Sarkar is a resident of Ganganagar in South 24 Parganas district, while Kazi Ahshanullah hails from Arambagh in Hooghly district. The latter owns a house in the Topsia area in Kolkata.