India: Police Arrest JMB Suspects Linked to '14 West Bengal Blast

Indian police on Monday claimed to have busted a cell of Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) with the arrests of six suspected members of the terror outfit, including three Bangladeshi nationals, from the northeastern Indian states of West Bengal and Assam over the weekend.

Five of the accused were wanted by India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA) in connection with an accidental blast inside a house that killed two suspected terrorists in West Bengal’s Burdwan district in October 2014, Joint Commissioner of Police Vishal Garg told reporters in Kolkata, the state’s capital.

The 2014 blast occurred when alleged JMB members using the house as a hideout were building explosives for attacks in Bangladesh aimed at toppling the government of that country, according to the NIA. Bangladesh shares a large part of its 4,096-km (2,545-mile) border with India in West Bengal and Assam.

“They [JMB] hatched a conspiracy wherein the main purpose was to establish Sharia Law in Bangladesh by toppling [the] democratically elected government and to spread tentacles in India for the furtherance of their goal,” the NIA said in a release, referring to its investigations into the 2014 blast.

“These people left West Bengal after [the] Burdwan blast. They had left the state and moved to south India and [other] northeastern states, where they were planning subversive activities. We are still trying to find out the details,” Garg said.

A court in Kolkata on Monday ordered all six – Anwar Hussain Farooq, Abdul Kalam, Mohammad Rubel (from Bangladesh), Yusuf Khetab (West Bengal), Jahidul Sheikh and Shahidul Shamim (Assam) – to police custody until Oct. 6.