Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) has detained the brother of Sheikh Rehmatullah alias Sajid, the key accused in Burdwan blast, from Narayanganj.
Published : 11 Nov 2014, 01:54 PM
Md Monayem aka Monwar Hossain aka Mona was caught from Farazikanda on Monday night, RAB media wing director Mufti Mahmud Khan said on Tuesday.
West Bengal Police arrested Sajid from near the Kolkata airport on Saturday in connection with the explosions in a house at Burdwan that killed two suspected Jamaat-ul Mujaheedin Bangladesh (JMB) militants on Oct 2.
Sajid was described as the ‘mastermind of the Burdwan terror module’ by the Indian state’s police after his arrest. He is said to be a member of Majlis-e-Surah (central committee) of JMB.
It was not yet clear whether his brother was also linked to JMB. RAB said he was detained for questioning on his brother’s terrorist activities.
Sajid is one of the people Indian intelligence says is linked to a plot to assassinate Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia.
According to Indian officials the 40-year-old Sajid, who had an Rs 1 million bounty on his head, is JMB’s commander.
Sajid and another person named Zia-ul Haque were arrested from Kolkata airport.
India’s National Intelligence Agency has already taken Sajid into its custody for interrogation.
It claimed to have unearthed an effort by JMB, which has been cornered in Bangladesh, to build a base in West Bengal in collaboration with Indian Mujahideen and Kashmiri militants. Sajid was using a madrasa in Murshidabad to run Jihadi training modules.
A blast on Oct 2 at a house in Burdwan’s Khagrhagarh killed two people, whom Indian intelligence officials suspect to be members of the outlawed Bangladeshi militant group, JMB.
Two women – Amina Bibi and Rajira Bibi – were detained from the house that day. Indian intelligence says they are JMB members from Bangladesh.
Anandabazar, a top Bengali language daily in India, reported on Monday that Sajid alias Masum alias Burhan Sheikh was known as Masud Rana and Masum in his hometown of Farazikanda.
They quoted his brother Monayem aka Mona, a welder, who said Masum (Sajid), the youngest of four brothers and four sisters, was sent to a madrasa in Dhaka after their father’s death. That is where he became involved in militant activities.
“We haven’t heard from him in ten years. We heard that he went to Afghanistan, and we didn’t know whether he was dead or alive,” he told the newspaper.
The Anandabazar report said all of Sajid’s family members had gone into hiding. Mona’s wife Shefali, and another woman named Rokeya, were the only ones there.
The paper said Sajid was an alias that Masum assumed after arriving in West Bengal. He also obtained fake Indian IDs under the name Burhan Sheikh.
The family said Burhan was in fact the name of one of his brothers, who works in Malaysia.
Residents of his hometown told the paper they knew Masum was involved with militant groups, but they did not think he was such a big leader.
They said Masum was arrested in 1997 with explosives, and later with illegal weapons. Both times his brother Mona posted his bail, at one point selling land to do so.
The last time when Masum left home, he told his family he was heading for Dubai.