Kolkata court sentences five JMB operatives to life term for waging war against India

Kolkata, Dec 3 (PTI) A Kolkata court on Wednesday sentenced five JMB operatives, two of whom are Bangladeshi nationals, to life imprisonment after finding them guilty of waging war against India and procuring arms for the purpose.

The operatives of the terrorist group Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) were planning to carry out subversive activities like bomb blasts in several states of India.

The Special Task Force (STF) of the Kolkata Police had arrested six accused persons in September 2016 from West Bengal and Assam with explosives, IED components, documents of their planning to cause explosions in India, and other articles.

Special Judge Rohan Sinha, City Sessions Court, at Bichar Bhawan here pronounced five of the six accused guilty and sentenced them to life imprisonment.

Anwar Hossain Faruque, Md Rubel, both Bangladeshi nationals, Maulana Yusuf Sk of West Bengal's Bardhaman and Md Sahidul Islam and Jabirul Islam of Assam were pronounced guilty and sentenced by the court.

The sixth accused, Bardhaman resident Abdul Kalam, was discharged from this case for want of evidence.

All the five accused were found guilty under various sections of the IPC, including 121 (waging or attempting to wage war against the government of India) and 122 (collecting men, arms or ammunition to wage war against the government).

The two Bangladeshis were also convicted under the Foreigners' Act.

All these accused persons were initially arrested in this STF case and subsequently were taken into custody by the National Investigation Agency in the Khagragarh bomb blast case of 2014.

Md Rubel, Maulana Yusuf Sk, Md Sahidul Islam, Jabirul Islam and Abdul Kalam were convicted in the Khagragarh bomb blast case.

The blast on October 2, 2014, had taken place at Khagragarh in Bardhaman town, claiming the lives of two terrorists, when they were in the process of making IEDs in a house they had rented.

The STF said in a statement that the force had in September 2016, apprehended the six acting on secret input regarding illegal activities of some dedicated and committed members and leaders of the JMB.

It said that physical and technical surveillance maintained by STF officers and personnel revealed that the terror group members were supposed to enter India illegally from Bangladesh through the Indo-Bangla border to meet some of their associates.

They were planning to carry out subversive activities like bomb blasts in some parts of north-east India and in south Indian states and also in other parts of the country "in order to wage war against the Government of India (as they think India is the main hurdle in implementing Sariah in Bangladesh and to establish a greater Bangladesh also to take revenge against so-called atrocities on Rohingyas and in Kashmir)," the STF stated.

The Bangladeshi accused persons had also procured fake Indian identity cards. PTI AMR NN