India: IS Suspect Attacks Prison Guard

Indian authorities said Monday they were investigating how an Islamic State (IS) suspect in custody got a weapon he allegedly used to try and slit a guard’s throat inside a high-security jail in West Bengal’s capital.

Mohammad Mosihuddin (alias Abu Musa), an inmate at Alipore Central Jail in Kolkata since his arrest in July 2016, attacked jail warder Gobinda Chandra Dey with a sharp iron object early Sunday while shouting extremist slogans, police said. Mosihuddin is being investigated in India for a possible link to an IS-claimed terrorist attack at a café in Bangladesh’s capital that same month.

“We have shifted him [Mosihuddin] to solitary confinement while we probe the attack,” Arun Kumar Gupta, the state’s director general and inspector general of Correctional Services, told BenarNews.

Ujjwal Biswas, West Bengal’s minister for Correctional Administration, said police had charged Mosihuddin with attempted murder.

“[A]n investigation is on. Jail authorities have also initiated an internal enquiry to find out how he got hold of the piece of metal,” Biswas told Benar.

Jail guard Dey was attacked when he unlocked Mosihuddin’s cell during a routine check at about 7 a.m., a prison official told BenarNews on condition of anonymity.