Police claim to arrest close aide to executed JMB leader Bangla Bhai

Police in Mymensingh have arrested a ‘JMB militant’, who, according to them, is a close aide of one of the banned outfit’s top former leaders Siddiqul Islam alias Bangla Bhai.

The arrest was made amidst a nationwide crackdown on militants.

The man, identified as Garibullah Akand, has been arrested from a village in the district’s Muktagacha Upazila, said police.

“He is wanted is four cases of murder, robbery and possessing explosives in Muktagacha. He had been the second-in-command of Bangla Bhai,” Muktgacha police OC Abu Md Fazlul Karim.

Akand was arrested in a case under the Explosives Act in December 2014, but was later released on bail.

He has been held from the same village, where police arrested Bangla Bhai in March 2006.
 

Bangla Bhai, executed in 2007, was the head of the executive council of Jamaa’tul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB).

He had gained notoriety in 2004, when he and his accomplices murdered two men in Naogaon’s Raninagar Upazila.

They had hung one of the bodies upside down from a tree, the picture of which made news headlines. 

In February 2005, the government banned the JMB and on Aug 17, the militant group triggered a string of blasts across 63 districts in Bangladesh.

Its top leader Shaykh Abdur Rahman was arrested on Mar 2, 2006 from Sylhet, four days before Bangla Bhai’s arrest in Mymensingh.

They were hanged on Mar 30, 2007 over the murders of two Jhalakathi assistant judges.

After lying low for a brief period, JMB again made headlines after its operatives snatched their three convicted colleagues from police by ambushing a prison van in Mymensingh in 2014.

Until recently, police had claimed that they had managed to wipe out JMB militants. 

But in May this year, the Bangladesh Police chief told the media that the defunct group was behind the terror attacks and targeted killings over the past three years.