India and Bangladesh have to make every effort to squelch the Neo-JMB and other such terrorist organisations, especially the IS, which is trying to base its operations in South Asia

The arrest of four terrorists of the Neo Jamaat-ul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) by a Special Task Force (STF) of Kolkata Police on June 25 once again underlines the organisation’s continued activities on Indian soil. The Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), which had banned the organisation on May 24, 2019, under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act of 1967, had stated in a gazette notification that the outfit was planning to set up permanent bases within 10 kilometres of India’s borders with Bangladesh in several districts of West Bengal, Assam and Tripura and that it planned to extend its network in South India to establish a Caliphate in the Indian sub-continent. According to the notification, “The involvement of JMB cadres has been established in the Burdwan bomb blast and Bodh Gaya blast. Assam Police has found involvement of JMB in five cases registered by them and a total of 56 accused belonging to the JMB have been arrested.” The MHA also said, “Jamaat-ul Mujahideen was engaged in recruitment and raising funds for terrorist activities, procurement of explosives/chemicals and assembling of IEDs.”

The JMB’s activities, which had largely remained behind the scenes until then, came into public attention after nine blasts had rocked the pilgrim city of Bodh Gaya on July 7, 2013, injuring a Tibetan monk and a tourist. While the Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) has been held primarily responsible, the MHA’s gazette notification indicates that the JMB was also involved. The latter’s hand has also been detected in the blasts that occurred on October 23, 2013, while Narendra Modi, then a prime ministerial candidate, was addressing a rally in Patna’s Gandhi Maidan. The five persons sentenced to life for involvement in the Bodh Gaya blasts were also suspects in the Patna explosions.

The JMB attracted further notice after a bomb had exploded in a house in West Bengal’s Burdwan district on October 2, 2014, killing two people. Investigations revealed what was virtually a Bangladeshi-run arms and explosives network in West Bengal, Assam and Jharkhand. According to the National Investigative Agency’s (NIA) chargesheet in the case, submitted in March, 2015, terrorists were using territories in the three States to overthrow Bangladesh’s democratic Government and put a hardline Islamic regime in its place.

The organisation’s South Indian reach was underlined on June 24, 2019, when the NIA arrested Habeebur Rehman, a suspected JMB militant from Doddaballapur in the outskirts of Bengaluru. He was wanted in connection with the Burdwan and Bodh Gaya blasts. According to the NIA, five other JMB terrorists may be hiding in Doddaballapur.

The organisation’s presence has been increasing in India mainly because it has been under tremendous pressure in Bangladesh where Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has zero tolerance for terrorism. According to a paper, The threat of a revitalised JMB to India’s security, by Nikhil Raj Aggarwal, “Between 2014 and 2017, more than 3,000 militants belonging to terrorist groups JMB and HUJI-B entered India through West Bengal, Assam and Tripura.” The pressure has been particularly heavy after the savage terrorist strike on Dhaka’s Holey Artisan Bakery in Gulshan, Dhaka, on the night of July 1-2, 2016, which killed 22 people, including 17 foreigners, and in which one of its factions was involved. A number of terrorists have been killed since then including two in a clash with security forces who raided their hideout in Dhaka on April 29, 2019.

While the JMB, which has split into three different factions, is on the run in Bangladesh, complacence is hardly warranted. It has a chequered history. Reportedly established in Bangladesh in April, 1998, it was first noted on May 20, 2002, when, according to South Asia Terrorism Portal, eight Islamist terrorists were arrested in Parbatipur in Dinajpur District along with 25 petrol bombs and documents relating to its activities. It had close links with fundamentalist Islamist organisations like the Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh, which had unleashed savage violence in north-western Bangladesh under the guise of combatting extremist communist violence, and the Ahle Haadith Andolan Bangladesh (AHAB), and had supporters and shelters in India almost since the beginning. The Operations Commander of the JMJB, Siddiqul Islam, widely known as “Bangla Bhai” often crossed over to the border districts of West Bengal.

The JMB perpetrated a large number of terrorist attacks in Bangladesh before international pressure compelled that country’s Government to ban it along with the JMJB and the AHAB on February 23, 2005. Follow-up action, however, was half-hearted because the Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh, a  partner in the Bangladesh Nationalist Party-led coalition Government headed by Begum Khaleda Zia, and the fountainhead of Islamic terrorism in Bangladesh, sabotaged strong action.

The JMB suffered a major blow on March 30, 2007, when six of its top terrorists, including its “supreme commander” Maulana Abdur Rahman and second-in-command, Bangla Bhai, were executed in Bangladesh. By 2010, it was thought to have been completely eradicated. That, however, was not the case. A section has emerged as Neo-JMB. India and Bangladesh have to make concerted efforts to squash it and other Islamist terrorist organisations, particularly since the Islamic State, routed in Syria and Iraq, is trying to base its operations in South Asia and has already established contact with a section of the JMB.

(The writer is Consultant Editor, The Pioneer, and an author)