Bangladesh arrests Burdwan blast kingpin's brother

The brother of the suspected kingpin of the Burdwan blast in West Bengal has been arrested in Bangladesh's Narayanganj port town, officials said here today. "We have arrested Sheikh Sadiq alias Sajid's brother Mohammad Monayem from Farazikanda in Narayanganj early this morning," a RAB spokesman told newsmen.

The elite anti-crime Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) arrested Monayem in an overnight raid three days after the West Bengal police nabbed Sajid, a member of Bangladesh's banned militant outfit Jamaatul Mujaheedin (JMB), while the National Investigation Agency (NIA) earlier described him as the "chief of the Burdwan module".

Sajid is the son of a retired lieutenant of the Bangladesh army and a resident of Narayanganj district, NIA had said. He is now being interrogated as after his arrest a Kolkata court ordered him to be remanded in police custody for 12 days while authorities earlier had announced a cash award of Rs 10 lakh for information leading to his capture.

Indian police earlier arrested a number of people, two of them being women from West Bengal and Assam, in connection with the blast on October 2. JMB and other Bangladesh-based militant groups like Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HuJI) seemed to have suffered a setback in view of years of massive security clampdown but reports often suggest they are trying to regroup.

In recent years, the group has carried out a series of bomb attacks across Bangladesh killing scores of people including two judges prompting the launch of a massive anti-terror campaign while officials have also suggested they had their organisational network in West Bengal.