Kolkata (BBN)-In a major breakthrough, Sajid aka Sheikh Rehmatullah, the alleged mastermind of West Bengal’s Burdwan terror module and a key member of a banned Bangladeshi terror outfit, was arrested by the state police this afternoon near the Kolkata airport.
Sajid is the first suspected Bangladeshi national to be arrested in the case.
A pan card and a voted ID card have been recovered from him, reports NDTV.
Sajid was arrested by the Anti-Terror Squad of the Bidhannagar Police which had tracked a courier who was to deliver money to Sajid this afternoon on Jessore Road near the Kolkata airport Saturday.
He is believed to be a central committee member of Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangaldesh or JMB which is banned in that country.
He is expected to be handed over to the National Investigation Agency (NIA) shortly.
The NIA had announced a cash reward of Rs. 10 lakh for any information leading to Sajid’s arrest.
According to the NIA, Sajid was living at Lalgola in Murshidabad district near a madrasa that NIA has now sealed.
With this arrest, the exact operations of the terror module is likely to come to emerge.
On October 2, a bomb had exploded in a house at Khagragarh in Bengal’s Burdwan district in which two persons, Shakil Ahmed and Sovan Mandal, were killed.
Initially assumed to be a gas cylinder blast or explosion of crude bombs, investigations revealed Shakil Ahmed and Sovan Mandal were actually fairly sophisticated improvised explosive devices or IEDs
Interrogation of two women arrested from the blast site revealed that a network of terror suspect was spread across several districts in Bengal.
In a house close to the blast site suspected to have been occupied by terrorists, the NIA recovered 39 IEDs eight days after the state police searched and sealed the it.
The Burdwan blast may have been connected to plans to destabilize Bangladesh, but recruits in the various madarsas opened by Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) operatives were being indoctrinated through videos of Gujarat riots, reports The Times of India.
Earlier on Friday, NIA arrested key motivator of the module and close associate of key accused Rezaul Karim and module chief Sajid.
Investigations have revealed that Zia-ul-Haq was tasked with the job of indoctrinating and training youths for terror activities in Simulia and Mukhimnagar madrasas.
According to NIA, for this he used “Jihadi videos related to the Gujarat riots, Assam riots, killing of Rohingiyas (in Myanmar) etc”. Investigations have also found his role in making of bombs as he was closely associated with Karim from whose house NIA recovered 39 bombs. A resident of Malda, Haq was also associated with Simulia madrasa chief Maulana Yusuf, who is absconding.
“Haq is a very important catch. It was at his house in Burdwan that module chief Sajid, a Bangladeshi national, would hold meetings on spreading jihad and carrying out terror attacks,” said an NIA officer.
An NIA statement said, “The technical investigation into the role of Zia-ul-Haq has disclosed that he was also closely associated with top JMB commanders including the absconding Bangladeshi JMB commander Sajid and Sakib alias Suman.”
Despite the blast, Haq had not absconded from his temporary residence at Masjid Talha in Khagragarh, Burdwan thinking that police would not come across his involvement, said sources. On Friday, he was called by NIA and later put under arrest.
NIA sleuths have also found a laptop which was given to him by Rezaul Karim. The agency has sent the laptop for forensic examination to cull out whatever information is stored in it.
Meanwhile, based on information provided by NIA, the Assam police has arrested wife of key blast accused Shahnur Alom from Barpeta. She allegedly trained at Simulia madrasa and was engaged in terror-related activities.
BBN/ASI-08Nov14-8:00pm (BST)