New Jamaat-linked Bangladesh terror outfit targeting Hindus

Dhaka: A new Bangladeshi militant outfit, aligned to the Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen (JMB), has prepared a list of local Hindus and secularists, and finalised plans to kill a Hindu doctor, police said.

The Ansar Rajshahi outfit has finalised plans to kill a doctor, Nirendranath Sarker. The members communicate with each other through secured messaging application Threema and social media website Facebook, police said.

Absconding JMB leader Shariful Islam Khalid, a Rajshahi University student who was involved in the murder of his teacher A.F.M. Rezaul Karim in April this year, is one of the organisers of the Ansar Rajshahi, the Dhaka Tribune reported.

Police came to know about the outfit after they arrested two cousins of Shariful -- 23-year-old Aminul Islam Rumi and 22-year-old Enamul Huq Sabuj on Monday. Both Rumi and Sabuj had hailed the Gulshan cafe terror siege in which 22 people, mostly foreigners were killed.

Since last year, the JMB has killed at least seven Hindu priests across the country and threatened several dozen Hindus and Christians with death. The outfit also targeted three Christians, killing two of them.

The Baghmara area, in Rajshahi district, is known as a stronghold of outlawed JMB. It saw a deadly suicide bomb attack on a local Ahmadiyya mosque on December 26 last year that killed the JMB suicide attacker and injured 10 persons.

In 2004, JMB second-in-command Siddiqul Islam alias Bangla Bhai established a reign of terror in the area by killing and torturing scores of people, Dhaka Tribune reported.

Shariful alias Rahat alias Talha, 25, has remained missing for the last 15 months, his family members say. He is the son of Abdul Hakim of Sreepur Khamarpara. He was a student of English department at Rajshahi University.

Police claim he was one of the JMB operatives who hacked Prof Rezaul to death near his house in Shalbagan area on April 23.

The family members of Shariful filed a general diary with the police on July 4 seeking information about him. He used to meet Rumi and Sabuj regularly before going missing last year.

The police on July 29 announced a Tk one lakh bounty for Shariful and another JMB militant - Nazrul Islam alias Bike Hassan who was wanted in 11 cases filed over the recent targeted killings including of Prof Rezaul.

Nazrul was killed in an alleged gunfight with the police on August 1.

Rajshahi Police Superintendent Moazzem Hossain said that they had found Threema app on the phones of Rumi and Sabuj.

Through the app, Rumi recently asked a member of his group whether he would launch the attack on the Hindu doctor as he had refused to convert to Islam.

Hailing the July 1 Gulshan terror attack, Rumi regretted that he could not embrace martyrdom like the five Gulshan attackers and sought blessings so that he could succeed in killing the Hindu doctors of the area.

In another communication, Sabuj told someone that he wanted to carry the operational cost of killing the targeted Hindu doctor, the Dhaka Tribune reported.