'Neo JMB' den busted in Jhenidah

The Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime (CTTC) unit claimed it busted a “Neo JMB” hideout in Jhenidah Sadar upazila yesterday.

The special police unit also claimed to have recovered a huge stash of explosives and a 9mm pistol from the den in a house in Porahati village.

The explosives include three suicide vests, a pressure cooker bomb, around 20 plastic containers of bomb-making chemicals and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and detonators.

No one was arrested as the suspected militants inside the house had fled before the drive began, said CTTC officials.

"A team of CTTC unit along with district police cordoned off a suspected hideout of 'Neo JMB' around 5:30pm, acting on information that militants were in the house,” Mohibul Islam Khan, deputy commissioner of CTTC unit of Dhaka Metropolitan Police, told The Daily Star.

"We are suspecting that some top 'Neo JMB' leaders were in there," he said.

Our Jhenidah correspondent added that the village is around four kilometres off the Sadar Police Station and there are two tin-shed small rooms in the house.

Mizanur Rahman, superintendent of Jhenidah police, told this newspaper that they primarily came to know that one Abdullah used to live in the house along with his family. 

The house owner and his family members were missing, and police were looking for them, he said.

Quoting locals, police said Abdullah, whose previous name was Provat Kumar, converted to Islam from Hinduism around five years ago. He has three children.

Last month, CTTC officials busted five hideouts of “Neo JMB” -- two in Chittagong, one in Sylhet and two in Moulvibazar. Nineteen people, including five children and five women, were killed in those incidents.

According to police, 16 of them were killed in suicidal blasts.

“Neo JMB”, which is believed to follow the ideology and strategy of Islamic State (IS), was responsible for the Gulshan café attack. Twenty-two people, including 17 foreigners and two police officials, were killed in the attack, said police.  

Since the attack, around 57 "Neo JMB" operatives have been killed in different drives.