The brother of the suspected kingpin of the Burdwan blast in West Bengal has been arrested in Bangladesh’s Narayanganj port town, officials said on Tuesday. “We have arrested brother of Sheikh Sadiq, alias Sajid, Mohammad Monayem from Farazikanda in Narayanganj early this morning,” a Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) spokesman said in Dhaka.
The elite anti-terror RAB arrested Monayem in an overnight raid three days after the West Bengal Police nabbed Sajid, a member of Bangladesh’s banned militant outfit Jamaat-ul Mujaheedin Bangladesh (JMB), while the National Investigation Agency (NIA) earlier described him as the “chief of the Burdwan module”.
Meanwhile, more than a month after the blast, the identity of the second accused, Abdul Karim, was established by NIA as not what was stated by the West Bengal Police earlier. NIA investigations into the case found that Karim was a resident of Kafirpur Kirnahar in Birbhum and all necessary tests were conducted before announcing the identity of the second person.
Karim, along with Sakil Ahmed, owner of the blast-hit house in Burdwan’s Khagragath, was killed when the explosive material accidentally went off. Karim died on his way to the hospital.The West Bengal Police had earlier announced that the identity of second person was Subhan Mondal without even following the laid down procedures, the sources said.
The identity of the second person was established after NIA made headway in its probe and arrested two - Sajid and Amjad Sheikh - of the 12 main accused wanted in the case.Another person Hasan Saheb, who was also injured in the blast, gave some information which led to the arrest of six people in Assam. However, only two women, including the wife of one of the deceased, gave some sketchy information about the blast conspiracy.
Sajid is the son of a retired lieutenant of the Bangladesh Army and a resident of Narayanganj district, NIA had said.JMB and other Bangladesh-based militant groups like Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HuJI) seemed to have suffered a setback in view of years of massive security clampdown but reports often suggest they are trying to regroup.
In recent years, the group has carried out a series of bomb attacks across Bangladesh killing scores of people, including two judges, prompting the launch of a massive anti-terror campaign while Bangladesh officials have also suggested they had their organisational network in West Bengal.