Police foil suspected extremist attack plan in Sylhet
A group led by Naimuzzaman, the head of Neo Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh’s Sylhet region was planning to attack major sites including the shrine of Hazrat Shahjalal (RA) in Sylhet, said the sources at the CTTC
A team from the police department's Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime (CTTC) division claimed to have foiled a suspected attack at major sites by detaining five people in several raids in Sylhet till Tuesday evening.
The detained people were identified as Sheikh Sultan Mohammad Naimuzzaman, Sayem Mirza, Rubel Mahmud, Abdur Rahim Jewel, and Sanaul Islam.
The group led by Naimuzzaman, the head of Neo Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh or Neo-JMB's Sylhet region, was involved in the bomb blast at the Paltan area in Dhaka on July 24, said the CTTC officials.
Keep updated, follow The Business Standard's Google news channel
According to CTTC sources, the other four youths are members of the militant unit of the Neo-JMB.
They were planning to attack major sites including the shrine of Hazrat Shahjalal (RA) in Sylhet, said the sources at the CTTC.
Police officials said that among the detained youths, two were students of Shahjalal University of Science and Technology (SUST) and another was of Madan Mohan College in Sylhet.
"They are being taken to Dhaka for further interrogation, we will brief the media after examining all the information," said Saiful Islam, deputy commissioner of the Counter Terrorism Unit.
Wahiduzzaman Noor Joy, an assistant commissioner of the Counter Terrorism Unit, told The Business Standard that they traced the group and their possible extremist attacks while investigating the recent bomb blast in the Paltan area of the capital.
Police, however, did not disclose any further details about the detained people saying that they were in the middle of their drives.
Earlier, top police officials of different units were instructed to remain alert as police suspected extremists' links to the explosion in the capital's Paltan on July 24 and finding of a bomb-like substance in Gulistan the following night.
Police officials then suspected that a group of Neo-JMB might have been involved in the attack, because explosive making patterns and devices used were almost similar.
