Bangla probe team to grill Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh suspects

KOLKATA: NIA and the Bengal authorities on Friday sought court permission for five-day police remand of three top Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh operatives so that they can be questioned by a visiting Bangladeshi intelligence team.
Bangladesh has promised to track down JMB fugitives in Bangladesh and Bengal. On Friday, five persons were arrested from Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, of which one is a Pakistani national.
In the past 30 hours, security personnel of Bangladesh have questioned some key suspects in the October 2 Burdwan blast, particularly the head of ‘65th unit’ (Bengal unit) of JMB Sk Rehmatullah alias Sajid. They are also likely to question Abdul Hamid, who survived the blast.
The Bangladeshi team spent around five hours at the NIA office at Salt Lake CRPF camp soon after arriving in Kolkata on Thursday evening, during which they interrogated Sajid. They retired only around midnight but were back at the NIA office on Friday morning to continue grilling Sajid. This time, they included Myanmar operative Khalid in their questioning. Sources said that while interrogating Sajid, the team felt the need to question some of the other accused, including Hamid.
NIA promptly applied for police custody of at least three of the accused and was granted five days’ remand of Sajid, Khaled and Hakim. NIA counsel Shyamal Ghosh sought custody, saying the Rapid Action Battalion team from Bangladesh wanted to interrogate them in connection with the blast.
The team is here to share field-level intelligence with Indian counterparts to track down JMB militants hiding in Bengal. Sources said the Bangladeshi sleuths seek four answers from the JMB trio: how the outfit regrouped in Bengal after the massive crackdown in Bangladesh; its funding links; the extent and spread of the group in Bangladesh; and whether it has already gained the capacity to target VVIPs in Bangladesh, like the Prime Minister and Opposition leader.
NIA and Bangladeshi security agencies are also trying to gauge the level of infiltration JMB has among the Rohingyas of Myanmar that has security implications for both nations. The team is likely to return to Dhaka next Monday and it is still not known if they will be going to Delhi or meeting senior police officers of Bengal. They are also yet to visit the Khagragarh blast site.