Staff Reporter :
Sahanur Alam, the top operative of Islamist terrorist outfit Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh [JMB], has revealed their secret plot to assassinate Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, during the quizzing by the National Investigation Agency [NIA] of India.
Also known as daktar [doctor] among the JMB outfit and also to intelligence agencies, Sahanur, one of the most wanted terrorists in the October 2 Burdwan blast case, was arrested by Assam police from a sleepy district of Nalbari on Friday night.
The Indian security officials said that they uncovered the plot against Sheikh Hasina while investigating the blast case. During the interrogation, Sahanur also revealed many other information regarding the matter.
The JMB also planned to set up a ‘Greater Islamic Bangladesh’, said the Indian media reports on Sunday quoting the NIA sources.
The NIA, which is probing the Burdwan terror case, is likely to send a report to its Bangladeshi counterpart after which it will be decided whether there is any need to visit Kolkata again to question Sahanur, head of the outfit in Assam.
Earlier, the NIA had announced a reward of Rs 5 lakh for information leading to Sahanur’s capture. The 31-year-old’s arrest is the biggest breakthrough since Bengal module chief Sajid was nabbed on November 8.
Assam DGP Khagen Sarma said Sahanur was not a combatant versed in use of firearms. “But he is more dangerous as he was involved in motivational training to recruit youths,” Sarma said.
Sahanur has revealed that several JMB leaders from Bangladesh visited a madrassa in Larkuchi in Nalbari — just as they did in Simulia and Mukimnagar madrassas in Bengal — to build a wider base among Assamese-speaking Bangladeshi immigrants. Sahanur and his wife Suzena went into hiding soon after the improvised explosive devise [IED] blast at Burdwan on October 2 that blew the lid off the JMB network in India. Suzena was arrested last month in Guwahati.
“We missed Sahanur by a whisker several times. We kept tracking him but he was moving from place to place in Meghalaya, Assam and areas on the India-Bangladesh border. He, however, could not go to Bangladesh,” Sarma said.
While being produced in court on Saturday afternoon, Sahanur claimed that he had surrendered and that his brother-in-law, Majibur, in whose house he was taking shelter, was in touch with police for this.
The DGP, however, denied it. “I don’t consider it as surrender because we were on the lookout for him,” Sarma said. He has been sent to 14 days’ police custody.
“Three key JMB operatives — Khaled, Hakim and Sajid — are in our custody and we want to interrogate Sahanur face-to-face with them. Khaled being the Myanmar points man and Sajid one of the main operatives in Bengal, there is a very strong possibility that they were interconnected and shared vital information,” an officer said.
Security agencies of both Bangladesh and India hope to get clues from Sahanur to track down JMB financiers.
According to NIA officers, funds for JMB used to reach Assam via Myanmar and North-East through hawala channels. “After the money reached Sahanur, he used to send it to different places according to instructions,” an NIA officer said. Investigators had got some insight into JMB’s money trail after Suzena’s interrogation.
“We are trying to find out if there was any direct funding by any person in Bengal or other parts of India. Sahanur can also tell us if money reached Bangladesh through him,” the officer added. Soon after his arrest, Sahanur was remanded to 14 days police custody yesterday, following a Guwahati court’s order. But, Sahanur reportedly told journalists outside the court that he had surrendered to police.
But the Assam’s director general of police contradicted that, saying: “Jihadis are not allowed to surrender. He was arrested.”
Sahanur, 36, had been on the run since October 2, when two JMB members were killed in an explosion while making homemade bombs in Burdwan in West Bengal.
His wife, 36, was arrested in Guwahati on November 8 on the same charges as her husband.
Earlier, NIA had said that all the accused and their associates involved in Burdwan blast case were members of the Bangladeshi terror outfit and were preparing IEDs to be transported to Bangladesh for possible terror attack there.
