Bengaluru: The NIA has arrested another member of the Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh in the city, a day after the nabbing of the outfit’s top leader Mohammed Jahidul Islam, wanted in several terror cases, officials said yesterday.
29-year old Adil Alias Assadullah, a resident of a village in West Bengal’s Murshidabad district, was arrested near the Cantonment Railway station on 7 August in connection with the bomb blast at Kalchakra Maidan in Bodh Gaya in 19 January, a statement from the National Investigation Agency said.
He was said to be the close associate of Jahidul Islam, who was arrested by an NIA team from nearby Ramanagara. Assadullah was produced before an NIA special court which granted transit remand for being taken to Patna.
The NIA said its sleuths recovered three mobile phones, bank paying slips, handwritten notes in Bangla language regarding chemical formulas for preparation of improvised explosive devices from him. Jahidul Islam was the top leader of the JMB in India and wanted in the Burdwan blast case and in many other cases in Bangladesh also.
He was the master mind in the Bodh Gaya case, the agency had said. On 2 October, 2014, a blast had occurred in a house at Khagragarh in West Bengal’s Burdwan district in which a man identified as Sakil Gazi died on the spot, while another named Sovan Mandal died in hospital.
Both of them were suspected of having terror links. The NIA had alleged that the JMB members wanted to establish Sharia rule by overthrowing the democratically-elected government in Bangladesh.
A low-intensity blast was reported at a kitchen set up at a ground in the temple town of Bodh Gaya on 19 January, causing panic among devotees gathered to hear the Dalai Lama’s discourse.
The NIA said seven people had been arrested in connection with the blast so far.