Detective Branch of Police arrested four people, including the head of the media and information technology department of the banned Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh-Neo JMB from Shibganj upazila of Bogura on Saturday morning.
A foreign pistol with two rounds of ammunition, a local one-shooter gun with cartridges, four sharp weapons and one kg of explosive-making equipment including wire-battery-tape were seized from them at the time. The police official said that it was possible to make half a hundred high-powered bombs with the explosives seized from them.
Bogura Additional Superintendent of Police Sanatan Chakraborty said, “Police had been searching for JMB members Tanvir Ahmed and Zakaria Jamil, who were involved in the militant attack in Ashulia in January this year, for a long time. On receiving news that those two are coming together to plan a new attack, DB police raided the Chandihara area of Shibganj upazila. Apart from Tanvir and Jamil, two others were also arrested from there”.
Rajshahi Range DIG Abdul Baten informed at a briefing at Bogura SP Office on Saturday afternoon that the new JMB had become largely inactive in the country as a result of continued police operations. They are not getting a chance to attack anywhere new. Police officials including Superintendent of Police Ali Ashraf Bhuiyan were present there.
During the briefing, the DIG further said that Tanvir Ahmed, a student of Jahangirnagar University, is the head of the information technology branch of the new JMB and Zakaria Jamil is the head of the media branch of the organization. One of the other two, Abu Saeed, was preparing to go to the Middle East to fight on behalf of the organization and the other Atiqur Rahman, a student of North South University, works to raise money for JMB.
Bogura Additional Superintendent of Police Sanatan Chakraborty further said that during the preliminary interrogation, the detained members informed the police that they had gathered to plan an attack somewhere to prove their existence in this situation.
After filing a case under the Arms, Explosives and Terrorism Act with Shibganj Police Station, all four of them were produced in court and remanded for 10 days, said Intelligence Branch Officer-in-Charge Abdur Razzak.