IGP AKM Shahidul Hoque presented a detailed report on Tuesday on the 37 murders that have taken place since the killing of blogger Ahmed Rajib Haider in 2013.
In it, he squarely blamed the JMB for 25 out of the 37 murders.
The list includes the murder of Japanese national Kunio Hoshi, tailor Nikhil Jowardar and the recent killing of Rajshahi University Professor AFM Rezaul Karim Siddiquee.
In the remaining four murders, which includes the murder of Italian national Cesare Tavella in Dhaka and the murder of Abdur Razzak in Jhenaidah, the police did not name any specific organisation but blamed a "terrorist organisation" to be behind the killings.
JMB
The Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh or JMB shot to infamy in 2005 after they executed a string of blasts across the nation. With the names of another two organisations—Harkat-ul Jihad Al Islami (HuJI) and Shahadat-e-al-Hiqma doing the rounds alongside them, the organisation was declared banned.
In 2014, however, in a daring ambush on a police van, the outfit displayed their audacity to secure the release of Salauddin Salehin alias Sunny and Jahidul Islam alias Bomaru Mizan -- two of their leaders -- from police custody. The attack left a policeman dead.
Ansarullah Bangla Team
The Ansarullah Bangla Team saw its moment of infamy after murdering blogger Ahmed Rajib Haider in 2014. The outfit was banned the same year.
Its chief Mufti Jasim Uddin is currently in jail.
A few years ago RAB claimed to have arrested a few operatives of the Kashmir-based outfit Laskar-e Tayeba. Later, police claimed to have arrested a few operatives of Islamic State from Bangladesh.
However, ever since the name of the outfit has been doing the rounds in connection with the murders and even the outfit reportedly claiming responsibility for the murders, the security personnel have been dismissive all along about the IS having a hand in the incidents.
Police claim to have solved 34 out of the 37 cases.
These include the murders of writer-blogger Avijit Roy, bloggers Ananta Bijoy Das and Niladri Chatterjee Niloy, publisher Faisal Arefin Dipan, and even the murder mystery of Professor Siddiquee, besides the murders of two foreign nationals.
However only six charge sheets have been made so far.
Among them, only the murder trial of Haider has been concluded. Among the murder cases of online activists, only the murder case of Oyasiqur Rahman Babu is included in the list of the six cases.