Staff Reporter :Just hours after release from the Kashimpur jail, the two suspected militants of Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) were killed in a ‘gunfight’ with the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) in an abandoned house at Bhogra of Gazipur district on Sunday night. The deceased have been identified as Mahbubul, 30, a resident of Purba Enayetpur in Gazipur district, and Minhajul, 25, from Kamarkhand of Sherpur upazila in Bogra district. The RAB personnel recovered explosives, four hand grenades, a pistol with five bullets, books on jihad and donators from the spot. Commander Mufti Mahmud Khan, Director of Legal and Media Wing of the elite force RAB, said this in a press briefing on Monday morning.”Acting on a tip-off, a team of RAB-1 raided a house beside a highway around 11:00pm and JMB suspects hiding in the house hurled homemade bombs injuring a RAB-1 member. The RAB personnel retaliated with gunfire and cordoned off the area. Following the gun battle, RAB recovered the two bodies,” the RAB official said. Earlier, the RAB busted what it says was a ‘militant hideout’ into an abandoned house at Jogitola near Gazipur-Chittagong bypass on Sunday midnight.TV footages showed RAB personnel searching the house that did not have any frame or cover on its windows.After the swoop at 2:00am, Muhammad Khan told reporters that two JMB members had been killed.He could not name them immediately, but there was enough indication that they were operatives of JMB. It used bombs like these in the past,” he said, referring to the three improvised bombs found in the house.An official of an intelligence agency, requesting anonymity, said that two ‘militants’ -‘Minhazul’ and ‘Mahbub’ – had been freed from Kashimpur Central Jail earlier in the day. RAB picked them up from the jail gate.Mahmud Khan said, “We had information that the members of a banned militant outfit gathered here and planned attacks.”Asked if there were only two in the house, he said, “Our personnel surrounded the house. There was no scope for anyone to escape.”The RAB official also said that a member of his force was injured as the ‘militants’ charged bombs.”One of us was hit by the shrapnels. He had been sent to hospital for treatment,” he said.When contacted, Gazipur Police Superintendent Harun-or-Rashid said that Minhajul and Mahbub were behind bars in Kashimpur high security prison in Gazipur.”They got bail on Sunday noon. Members of RAB-1 took the two under their custody when the militants walked out of jail,” said the SP.He said that the RAB told him nothing about the “drive and the gunfight.”Harun-or-Rashid said that he heard about the “gunfight” from the media people.Khandaker Rezaul Hasan, Officer-in-Charge (OC) of Joydevpur Police Station, said that the bodies were sent to the Gazipur Sadar Hospital morgue for an autopsy.No case was filed in this connection, the police official said. Additional police personnel have been deployed in the area, the OC said. Last Thursday, security agencies in a raid on a house at Mirpur in Dhaka found grenades and explosives.On Sunday, police in Chittagong raided a ‘JMB hideout’.An MK-11 sniper rifle, ammunition, explosive gel, detonators, pieces of army uniform, and bomb-making materials were found in the house.The raid was conducted on information leaked out from one of three suspected JMB men arrested on Saturday.
