Salehin is one of three top JMB leaders who were abducted from police custody during an attack on a prison van that led to the death of a police officer at Trishal, Mymensingh on Feb 26, 2014.
Bangladesh police announced a Tk 500,000 in reward for catching Salehin, a founding Shurah member of JMB. He is also named on the list of ‘most wanted’ criminals by Indian national investigation agency NIA. Salehin has gone under the name Hafizur Rahman Sheikh alias Mahin several times in India.
Boma Mizan was arrested on Aug 6 during an NIA raid in Bengaluru over bomb blasts in Bihar’s Bodh Gaya and West Bengal’s Badhaman. However, Indian detectives are yet to find Salehin.
bdnews24.com spoke to Additional Deputy-Commissioner at Counter-terrorism and Transnational Crime or CTTC unit of Bangladesh Police Sanowar Hossain about the militant group’s recent activities marking the 13th year of the JMB’s synchronised bomb blast operation throughout the country on Friday.
“Most of the members of the old factions of the JMB have been arrested in Bangladesh and India. They don’t have the same power that they did before. But we believe Salehin, a leader of the old fraction, is hiding in India. It will weaken JMB if we can arrest him,” he told bdnews24.com.
JMB TO NEO-JMB
According to police officials, the JMB began its activities towards the end of last millennium led by Shayekh Abdur Rahman. Rahman and some of his associates also took part in the war in Afghanistan.
JMB’s activities began to spread after Abdur Rahman returned from Afghanistan and the organisation came into the spotlight at the beginning of 2003 after law enforcers received information on the organisation from a few militants arrested in Dinajpur and Chapainawabganj.
Bangla Bhai and his associates killed Idris Ali alias Khejur Ali and Abdul Qayum Badshah in Raninagar, Naogaon on May 20, 2004 and hanged Badsha’s body upside down from a tree. The attack shocked nation and ‘Bangla Bhai’ became infamous when a photograph of the body was published in media.
JMB made a show of their power by conducting a synchronised bomb blast in 63 districts of the country on Aug 17, 2005 after the government had banned JMB and JMJB on Feb 21 that year.
RAB arrested Bangla Bhai from Muktagachha in Mymensingh on Mar 6, 2006. Shayekh Abdur Rahman was arrested four days earlier from Sylhet.
Six militants, including Shayekh Abdur Rahman and Bangla Bhai, were hanged on Mar 30, 2007 for the murder of Senior Assistant Judge Sohel Ahmed and Jagannath Parhe in Jhalakathi district. Another convict on the same case was hanged on Oct 15, 2016.
The JMB has detonated 500 bombs in 300 places throughout the country and resulted in the death of two people and the injury of nearly 200.
At least 159 cases were filed over the incidents, said Additional Assistant Inspector General in Police Headquarter Md Quamruzzaman. At least 334 were convicted in some of those cases while 52 cases are still in the trial phase with 386 suspects awaiting verdicts.
The organisation slowed down its activities after those incidents but again resurfaced with militant attacks on writers, publishers, online-activists, religious preachers, clergymen and people from different faiths in 2013.
Then, on Jul 1, 2016, Bangladesh witnessed an unprecedented terror attack on the Holey Artisan Bakery in Dhaka’s Gulshan which resulted in the deaths of 22 persons, including 17 foreigners.
The neo-JMB began its terror activities in 2013, led by Tamim Chowdhury and former Dinajpur madrasa teacher in Md Abul Kashem, said Chief of Counter-terrorism Unit of Police Monirul Islam.
Tamim Chowdhury along with some of the top leaders on Neo-JMB have been killed in raids while others have been arrested after security forces began a crackdown in response to the Gulshan attack.
“Many of the old JMB leaders had joined the neo-JMB led by Tamim Chowdhury, but it has been weakened now due to law enforcers’ efforts,” said Additional Deputy Commissioner of CTTC Sanower Hossain.
Although the terror outfit has be cornered, few members of old JMB have been arrested in recent years, said the police official.
“According to Indian police, some of them are active in India. Salehin is one of them.”
WHO IS SALEHIN?
Salahuddin Salehin alias Sunny is a founding Shurah member of JMB and hailed from Narayanganj.
He is named as a suspect in more than 40 cases and has received death sentence in three of them.
Salehin passed his SSC in 1997 and was admitted to Tejgaon Polytechnic Institute in Dhaka. He was then an activist in Islami Chhatra Shibir, the student wing of Jamaat-e-Islami. He became estranged from his family and at one point became involved with militancy.
Salehin described the initiation, spread and activities of JMB in Bangladesh in his confession to the trial court after he was arrested by RAB on Apr 25, 2006 from Pahartali, Chattogram.
“I established an anonymous organisation at Kadamtala, Bashabo in 1999. Shayekh Abdur Rahman, Hafez Masud, Shahed, Rana and I became the Majlish Shurah members in the organisation. Later two others were appointed when Shahed and Rana left the party. The organisation was structured and named as ‘Jama’atul Mujahideen Bangladesh’ in 2001,” Salehin said in his confession.
After 2001, they divided the responsibilities of the organisation among them by dividing the country into different regions, Salehin told the court. He was responsible for the northern regions, including Mymensingh, Jamalpur, Sherpur, Netrokona and Kishoreganj. Later, he was given also given responsibility of Sylhet.
Salehin and associates murdered a young man called Hridoy Roy in Jamalpur district for converting to Christianity and travelling to different villages and preaching the life story of Jesus Christ on behalf of a Christian mission.
The High Court upheld the death sentence for Salehin in the case in 2013. He was also sentenced to death in another case of murdering Gani Gomes, another converted Christian.
Salehin did not appeal the death sentence but questioned Bangladesh’s judicial system.
File Photo
Rakibul was arrested on the same day and later killed in a ‘shootout’ with police while trying to flee.
Bangladesh police announced a Tk 500,000 reward for catching the other two fugitives after it failed to find them.
Indian central intelligence began to look for Mizan and Salehin following an explosion in a house in Khagragarh, Bardhaman that resulted in the deaths of two. They also began to exchange information with Bangladesh police.
In February the Hindustan Times cited police as stating that Salehin and Mizan have spread terror activities under the name of Jama’atul Mujahideen India.
Salehin styled himself an amir of JMI in an interview published with its media wing, Sham Al Hind.
“We are working to make India a centre for Hizrat and Jihad so that people in India can contribute to establishing the base of a new caliphate,” the Hindustan Times quoted Salehin as saying in the interview.
