Kolkata Police arrest six JMB members from Assam
Five of those arrested were named in the 2014 Burdwan blast chargesheet.
In a major breakthrough in the 2014 Khagragarh blast case, the Special Task Force of Kolkata Police has arrested six Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen (Bangladesh) terrorists from Assam and Cooch Behar and North 24 Parganas districts in West Bengal. Among the six arrested, five are named in the chargesheet filed by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in the Khagragarh blast case.
Three of those arrested are Indians while the rest three are Bangladeshi nationals.
With these arrests, only three of the 29 named in the Khagragarh blast case now remain traceless.
Read: Burdwan blast: NIA court frames charges against 30 accused
Among those arrested was Moulana Yusuf, who was the head of the madrasa at Simulia in Burdwan district where new JMB recruits were indoctrinated and given arms training. He was constructing a new madrasa at Simulia Choti at a spot close to the earlier one, when the blast occured, and he had to flee.
“Primary investigations revealed that the terrorists were planning to carry out immediate attacks in the North East and even in Southern India. However, their primary intention is to overthrow the democratically elected Bangladesh government. They were absconding since the blast took place in 2014,” said a STF sleuths.
On October 2, 2014 as the entire state was busy in Durga Puja celebrations, an IED explosion at a two-storey house at Khagragarh of Burdwan town killed two and exposed an unprecedented and wide network of Bangladeshi jihadi elements running a virtual arms-and-explosive factory in the state.
Read: Burdwan bombs meant for Bangladesh, says NIA
On March 30, 2015 the NIA framed a 164 page document chargesheet naming 29 accused and 400 witnesses. Eight of the accused were absconding.
Charges were framed under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) and Arms Act. Even in their chargesheet, NIA mentioned that the terrorists are using soil of Bengal, Assam and Jharkhand to overthrow the democratically elected government of Bangladesh, and replace it with a hardline Islamic rule.
Among the six arrested, Anwar Hussain is a Bangladeshi national and was the head of Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen in Bengal. Moulana Yusuf was the second in command and was responsible for coordinating terror modules at different madrasas in the state. Mohammad Rubel and Abul Kalam are IED experts, and the latter used to train the recruits into the outfit. Zabirul Islam and Shahudul Islam were responsible for fresh recruits in the outfit.
Read: Ending the suspense: Mystery of Burdwan blast explained
While two of them have been arrested from Cooch Behar and from Cachar district in Assam, two each were arrested from Bongaon and Basirhat in North 24 Parganas.
“Sizable quantities of explosive material, detonators, explosive powders and IEDs were recovered from the accused. We also seized fake Indian and Bangladeshi currency and cellphones and laptops from them,” said Joint CP (Crime) of Kolkata Police Vishal Garg.
They were produced at a court on Monday.
