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Bangladeshi terrorist gets 29-yr jail term for Khagragarh bomb blast in Bengal
The bomb blast on October 2, 2014 killed two suspected terrorists and injured a third and exposed a network of Bangladeshi terrorists in the state.
A National Investigation Agency (NIA) court in Kolkata on Wednesday sentenced Kausar, a Bangladeshi national and an operative of the banned Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) to 29 years in jail for his role in the 2014 bomb blast in a rented house at Khagragarh in Bengal’s East Burdwan district.
Kausar was convicted under Sections 120B (criminal conspiracy) and 125 of the IPC (waging or attempt to wage war against the government of any Asiatic power in alliance or at peace with the government of India).
He was arrested from a guest house in Bengaluru in August 2018 in a joint operation by the NIA and local police. As many as 31 people were named in the charge-sheet. Most of them have been convicted.
Kausar, 31, is an accused in the 2018 Bodhgaya blast as well. He is also named in a case being investigated by the Special Task Force (STF) of the Kolkata Police, officials said.
Kausar had formed a third faction of the JMB that operated out of West Bengal, a senior state intelligence officer told HT on condition of anonymity. The faction is often referred to as the New JMB.
"Kausar sneaked in and out India several times. He was close to Salahuddin who ran the second faction of the JMB. Kausar’s plans to carry out big terror attacks suffered a setback after the IED blew up in Khagragarh, killing two of their own operatives. It is the third faction of the JMB that allegedly masterminded the Holey Artisan Bakery attack in Dhaka in 2016. It is suspected that the faction has links with the Islamic State. Kausar was part of the modules that carried out more than 70 terror attacks in Bangladesh," the IB officer said.
On October 2, 2014, when Bengal was celebrating Durga Puja, an improvised explosive device (IED) explosion killed two suspected terrorists and injured a third person while they were making bombs and explosive devices at a rented house in Khagragarh locality of Burdwan town. The blast exposed a network of Bangladeshi terrorists in the state.
The NIA took over the probe later that year and submitted the first charge sheet in March 2015. “The rented house was occupied by the members of JMB, ostensibly for burkha-stitching, though in reality it was being used for the nefarious activity of bomb-making,” the NIA had said in a statement that year.
In the chargesheet in the Khagragarh case, the NIA mentioned a conspiracy to overthrow the Sheikh Hasina government in Bangladesh.
A large number of IEDs, explosives, hand grenades and training videos were seized during the investigation which also pointed at sleeper cells in the districts of Bengal.
In August 2019, a special NIA court in Kolkata convicted 19 people, including four Bangladeshis, in the Khagragarh blast case.
The accused persons were convicted under the Indian Penal Code, Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, Explosive Substances Act and Arms Act. All of them were charged with waging or attempting to wage war against the state.
The Union home ministry banned JMB and its factions in May 2019.
