Police find balm in Burdwan trophy | |
| OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT| Sunday , November 9 , 2014 | | |
Calcutta, Nov. 8: Bidhannagar police today arrested the Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh’s alleged point man in Bengal and trumpeted the success, trying to shake off the twin stigmas of incompetence and lack of cooperation with central agencies. Officers told a news conference they had laid a trap and captured Sajid alias Sheikh Rahmatulla from Jessore Road on Calcutta’s northern fringes around 2.30pm. He has been handed over to the National Investigation Agency (NIA), to which the case has been transferred. “We had information that Sajid would be receiving Rs 1 lakh in cash from a courier. He was trapped and arrested,” Bidhannagar police commissioner Rajeev Kumar said without giving details of the trap or the courier. NIA superintendent Vikram Khalate confirmed that the suspect was Sajid, whom the agency had earlier described as the head of the Jamaat’s operations in Burdwan while putting a Rs 10-lakh reward on him. “He is a Bangladeshi,” Khalate told The Telegraph. Sajid is believed to be from Narayanganj district. “He would never stay at one place for more than a few days. His arrest is a significant development,” an NIA official said, adding that an agency team would leave for Bangladesh tomorrow. Sources said the police had lacked any photograph of Sajid. After the capture, they forwarded his picture to an NIA sleuth’s cellphone and had him identified by blast survivor Abdul Hakim, who is in the central agency’s custody. The state police milked the arrest to spruce up their image, left battered following the October 2 blast at a bomb-making unit in Burdwan, especially after they detonated the seized bombs and grenades before the federal agency could lay its hands on them. Today, the top brass of the Bidhannagar commissionerate were out in numbers at the 6pm news conference, called allegedly at chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s behest. “It can be construed as a message that the state agencies were competent enough,” a senior IPS officer said. He said the Bidhannagar police, CID and Calcutta police’s special task force had worked jointly on certain leads on Sajid. Sajid, a member of the Majlis-e-Shura, the Jamaat’s highest policymaking body, had been staying near the Mukimnagar madarsa in Murshidabad and frequenting Khagragarh, the blast site, over the past few months. “He had a role in recruitment and organisation of training,” an NIA source said. Sajid’s wife Fatima and three other women —Ayesha, Moina and Saira, the wives respectively of blast accused Yusuf Sheikh, Talha Sheikh and Suman alias Sadiq — were the four lead trainers at the madarsas in Shimulia (Burdwan) and Mukimnagar, the source said. Questions marks had been hung over the Bengal police after they had delayed a search of the Shimulia madarsa. The Intelligence Bureau formally accused them of attempting a cover-up by initially passing the explosion off as a cylinder blast, burning documents, and tutoring accused not to speak. The state administration too earned flak by opposing an NIA probe. Later, a central team led by national security adviser Ajit Doval came down to Calcutta to explain to Mamata how the terror outfit had spread its network in the state. http://www.telegraphindia.com/1141109/jsp/frontpage/story_19017071.jsp#.VF7GqzSUeSo |
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Bangla terror outfit, Burdwan: One arrest, four absconding
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