After questioning nine members of the Islamic extremist group HuJI and Ansarullah Bangla Team following their arrest recently, the detective police have stumbled on this worrying revelation.

Dhaka Metropolitan Detective Police’s Additional Deputy Commissioner Mohammad Sanwar Hossain said,” They were planning to fund their activities by looting banks and by siphoning off money from their account holders.

“They were also mastering the skill of hacking the passwords of debit and credit cards of the bank account holders.”

Detective police have focused on assessing militant capabilities after their alleged involvement in looting Ashulia’s Commerce Bank.

The nine members nabbed from the capital’s Banasree and Sutrapur area have confessed to their plans to loot a private bank in Dinajpur, said the detective police officials.

The militants were also learning to make bombs and other explosives as a part of their expanding repertoire.

A massive amount of explosives, bomb making equipment and a large number of handmade bombs were seized when the militants were arrested last week.

Deputy Commissoner Sanwar Hossain said, “They were working towards establishing a militant group named ‘Bangladesh Jihadi Group.’ They mostly recruit members through the internet.”

After the failure of Ashulia bank loot, they were planning to resort to different techniques to collect funds, she said.

“After breaking the whole group into smaller groups, they were being trained by those who are technologically sound among them,” added the detectives. “They have peer educators."

Sanwar Hossain also said that they were analysing the insights of how law enforcement agencies of different countries work against the militants.

Six terror organisations, including HuJI, JMB, Ansarullah Bangla Team, have been banned in Bangladesh.