Bangladesh Jamaat's financial brain nabbed in Burdwan blast case

After being on the run for eight months, National Investigation Agency on Thursday arrested Nurul Haque, alleged to be key a conspirator in many activities of Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh terror outfit, in connection with Burdwan blast case.

NIA claimed that Haque had been arrested from Howrah railway station on Thursday afternoon and was being interrogated for his role in the October last year’s Burdwan blasts that led to unravelling of a conspiracy of toppling the government of Sheikh Hasina in Bangladesh and replacing it with a government on Sharia rule.

Aged 26 years, Haque, a resident of Bakshipur of Murshidabad district, carried a cash reward of Rs one lakh on his head.

NIA said in a release that several witnesses as well as interrogation of arrested JMB cadres, arrested in connection with the case, had spoken about the name of ‘Naeem’ as a very active member of the terror outfit who was operational in Birbhum district of West Bengal and was in close association with Dalim Sheikh (arrested) and Talha Sheikh, a Bangladeshi national who is absconding.

He is alleged to be “actively involved in local fund collection drive along with Dalim Sheikh. As per the witness accounts, Haque is a trained member of JMB, having undergone training at Mukimnagar Madarsa in Murshidabad and Shimulia Madarsa in Burdwan district, on two occasions at least”, NIA alleged in the release.

He is said to have been elevated to the position of a ‘trainer’ and he had since been actively provided training in arms firing, explosives handling and self-defence techniques in terror training camps of JMB at Shantipally in Birbhum as well as Simulia and Mukimnagar Madrasa, NIA claimed.

It is alleged by NIA that he also doubled up as a “motivator in radicalisation camps, wherein he used to show various video clips of Jehadi orientation, on a laptop to JMB new recruits, and thereafter urged them to join the Jihadi movement with JMB and take revenge for atrocities on Muslims worldwide.”

With his arrest, the number of people nabbed in the case has gone to 21.

On October 2 last year, a blast took place inside a house at Khagragarh in which one person Sakil Gazi died on the spot and another person Sovan Mandal succumbed in hospital. Both of them were suspected to have terror links.

NIA later found that the actual identity of Mondal was Karim Sheikh and he had misled West Bengal police about his identity. 

JMB is believed to have been formed in 1998 in Dhaka and surfaced only after the arrest of its men in May, 2002 along with 25 petrol bombs and documents detailing the activities of the organisation.