Goalpara residents voluntarily demolish madrasa allegedly linked to terrorism

Goalpara: In the first-of-its-kind incident, residents of Darogar Alga village in the Pakhiura area of Assam’s Goalpara district voluntarily demolished a madrasa and the residences of two madrasa teachers suspected to be linked to terror organisations.

The two suspected Bangladeshi nationals – Aminul Islam and Jahangir Alom – used to stay in a thatched house adjacent to the madrasa.

“Muslims are not related to jihadi activities. There may be fringe elements but we belong to the working class and depend on daily earnings. We don’t want to be linked to such elements and won’t allow the residence of a jihadi element to exist here. For this reason, we demolished their houses,” said one of the locals.

This is the first instance of voluntary demolition of an Islamic educational institution allegedly linked to alleged jihadi activities. Earlier, the Assam government had demolished three madrasas in Bongaigaon, Barpeta and Morigaon districts.

This came after the Director General of Police, Bhaskar Jyoti Mahanta, called a meeting on September 4, with various stakeholders of Islamic organisations that run madrasas in Assam and discussed issues such as proper regularisation of madrasas, funds raised to build them, registration of imams coming from other places and the importance of other subjects to be included in the curriculum.

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