Dhaka, Oct 2 (Inditop.com) Bangladesh police have said they have arrested a sixth Indian national suspected to have links with a Pakistan-based militant organisation in the last five months and are looking for many more.
These Indian fugitives were overseeing operations of the Islamist militant outfits in Bangladesh for the past many years, officials said, according to media reports Friday.
The latest to be caught early Thursday, Mohammad Emdadullah, is suspected to have links to the Pakistan-based militant outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the banned outfit that is at the centre of numerous terrorist activities including the terror attack in Mumbai last November.
The Detective Branch arrested Emdadullah, 28, alias Mamun alias Ripon Miah, from Gabtali area in the national capital, New Age newspaper said.
Like the others, Emdadullah is suspected of being an operative of India’s “Asif Reza Commando Force”, named after a Kashmiri militant killed in Gujarat in India.
He is also suspected to have links with the Taliban who trained him in the use of arms and explosives and deployed him in Afghanistan, The Daily Star said.
The success trail of the Dhaka authorities began on May 27 with the arrest of Indian national Abdul Rauf alias Daud Merchant, serving a jail term on conviction of killing Bollywood music baron Gulshan Kumar in 1997.
With clues received from Merchant, the police nabbed others, including two LeT operatives, Maulana Obaidullah and Maulana Mansur, hiding since 1994 and masquerading as teachers while overseeing militant operations and being on the payroll of international don Dawood Ibrahim.
Emdadullah was found with a Bangladeshi voter identity card.
Detective branch deputy commissioner Mainul Islam told reporters Thursday that Emdadullah would be interrogated in connection with most of the cases relating to the bomb and grenade attacks carried out by Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HuJI), as preliminary investigations suggested that he had been sheltered by the Harkat in Bangladesh.
He said that Emdadullah was trained in using all kinds of arms, including grenades, bombs, AK-47, SLR, machine gun, rocket launchers and missiles in Balochistan in Pakistan and had been staying in Bangladesh since April 2006.
“He along with three others was trained by a top operative of Lashkar-e-Taiba, Abdullah,” he said.
A resident of Padmapukur under North 24 Parganas in the India’s West Bengal state, Emdadullah was arrested by the Indian police in 2006 but escaped and crossed into Bangladesh the same year, the official said.
After receiving training in Pakistan, Emdadullah, son of Abu Nasser, returned to his village home and started working for the Asif Reza Commando Force.
Emdadullah maintained contacts with LeT leader Abdullah, who is now in Pakistan, over telephone regularly. Abdullah used to send him money through Western Union money transfer service.
“I came to Bangladesh in April 2006 to take shelter here and Abdullah sent me (Indian) Rs.4,000 per month from Pakistan through Western Union Money Transfer,” he said when he was produced before the media.
