India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA) has handed RAB a list of 11 terrorists, including several Burdwan blast suspects, who it believeS are hiding in Bangladesh.
RAB, on its part, has given the visiting NIA delegation a list of 51 criminals, including 10 militants, who are purportedly holed up in India.
The lists were exchanged during a meeting of top officials of the two sides at the RAB headquarters on Tuesday evening, RAB spokesperson Mufti Mahmud Khan said.
He told bdnews24.com that the NIA list contained names of 11 ‘most wanted’ Indian nationals, who, according to the agency, were hiding in Bangladesh.
They are ‘Kausar’, Yusuf Sheikh, Borhan Sheikh, Rezaul Karim, Talha Sheikh, Amjad Ali Sheikh, Abul Kalam, Shahnur Alam, Habibur Rahman Sheikh, Zahirul Sheikh and ‘Nasirullah’.
RAB’s Khan said their list included JMB’s present chief Sohel Mahafuj and members Salauddin Salehin alias Sunny and Jahidul Islam alias Boma Mizan, Anwarul Islam, ‘Sakhawat’ and Abu Sayed Sheikh Hossain.
Sunny and Boma Mizan were among three JMB members snatched by a large group of armed men from a prison van in a Hollywood-style hold-up in February this year on a highway at Mymensingh’s Trishal Upazila.
Bangladesh’s list also includes four absconding HuJI members – Maulana Tajuddin, Shafiqur Rahman, Jahangir Alam Badar and Mufti Abdul Hai – who are accused in the Aug 21, 2094 grenade attack case.
Among others on the list, the top ones were ‘Shahadat’, ‘Mukul’, ‘Shahin’, ‘Robin’, ‘Zishan’, ‘Joy’, ‘Mamun’, Molla Masud and ‘Kalu’.
During the nearly two-and-half-hour-long meeting with the four-member NIA team led by its Director General Sharad Kumar, senior RAB officials, including its Director General Mokhlesur Rahman, were present.
The NIA has been investigating Jihadi networks between after the Oct 2 blast at a house in West Bengal’s Burdwan town.
The house, Indian investigators said, had been turned into a factory for making Improvised Explosive Devices (IED) by militants of the banned outfit, JMB.
Two suspected militants died in the explosion and their wives, believed also to have been trained by the JMB, were caught.
The incident led to the unravelling of a wide terror network, the investigators said, also claiming that the militants were out to eliminate two top Bangladesh politicians – Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia.
The NIA felt the need to investigate in Bangladesh and the four-member team arrived in Dhaka Monday.
Prior to the meeting with RAB, the NIA delegation had another one with the six-member Bangladesh team, headed by the home ministry’s Additional Secretary Kamal Uddin Ahmed, at the Police Headquarters earlier in the day.
After that meeting, Dhaka Metropolitan Police’s Joint Commissioner Monirul Islam also told reporters that the NIA’s list of suspects given to Bangladesh includes the names of JMB’s Sunny, Boma Mizan and Faruk Hossain, who is the suspected mastermind behind the ambush in February that freed the other two.
Bangladeshi law enforcers are yet to trace them.
“NIA is looking for them too because they suspect they (the trio) are connected with the Burdwan incident,” Islam said.
NIA officials think bomb-making expert Boma Mizan is training young JMB militants on explosives in West Bengal, he added.
“They have sought our help to arrest them as we sought theirs. We have given the photos of the three to NIA. They could be living there (India) by changing their names.”
NIA had made several arrests after the Oct 2 blast in Burdwan. Some of them are Bangladesh nationals including one Sheikh Rahmatulla Sajid, they said.
After arresting Sheikh Rahmatulla Sajid on Nov 8 in Kolkata, Indian authorities claimed that the 40-year-old from Narayanganj was a JMB commander.
RAB has not been able to find anyone named ‘Sajid’ at the address mentioned by the Indian media, but traced one Masum Miah and arrested his brother in Narayanganj on Nov 11.
But DMP ofgicial Monirul Islam on Tuesday said police were ‘almost certain’ that Sajid and Masum were the same person.
“We are almost certain about that, based on the information gathered from his relatives and people close to him. He was arrested once in 2005 in a robbery case and again in Dhaka in 2012.”
On the issue of the plot to kill Hasina and Khaleda, the Detective Branch joint commissioner said information received from ‘open sources’ and the NIA ‘widely varied’.
“NIA is yet to find out where the militants were planning to use the explosives being made there (West Bengal).”
Islam said they would be able to construct a full picture of the investigation after combining the information exchanged between the investigators from both Bangladesh and India.
The NIA on Monday arrested a Myanmar national named Kaleed alias Khalid Mohammed, who belongs to a Rohingya solidarity organisation, in Hyderabad over the Burdwan blast.
Asked whether anyone from a third country could be using a Bangladeshi name, Monirul Islam said, “Things we discussed until now indicate that citizens of both counties are involved in this.”
“They (NIA) said their investigation was still at the primary stage. So further enquiry can dig up new information.”
He added that NIA’s list had included the description, possible addresses and nationality of those they had arrested over the Burdwan blast until now.
“But we will crosscheck them. They (NIA) have identified the citizens of their state. But they have only expressed suspicion over the identities of people from our country,” said the DMP official.
The NIA officials would return to India on Wednesday. They also invited Bangladeshi officials to visit India, Islam added.
Source: Bd news24
