JMB's robbery exposed again

Fazlur Rahman never worries about carrying cash in Rajshahi but he remains cautious. When he needs money for paying workers' wages at his Rahman Jute Spinners Private Ltd, he sends more than one official to withdraw the cash from a bank in the city. They carry it in a vehicle back to his factory 12 kilometres away at Mahendra. 

On October 5, 2017, his accountant Mominul Islam and field officer Aninda Kumar Chowdhury withdrew Tk 17.50 lakh from a branch of the National Bank in the city for paying 1,000 workers. They were then heading back to the factory on a pickup van.

Hardly 1km from the factory and near the brick kilns where the road seldom gathers traffic, a group of six armed people pointed guns and asked them to stop.

Rahman's men found nothing to fret about when they noticed the six men wearing the jackets of Detective Branch of police. But when they understood they were wrong, they had no time to dodge the circumstances.

The disguised men asked Mominul, Aninda and their pickup driver Taybur Islam Dulal to step out. They first snatched their cell phones. On the pretext of searching the vehicle, they then grabbed the money and sped away in two motorcycles.

Seven months after the robbery, Rajshahi Metropolitan Police now says it arrested five persons in this connection and four of them disclosed that a group of at least 14 militants of banned outfit Jama'atul Mujahedeen Bangladesh (JMB) orchestrated it.

The four gave statements before courts in Rajshahi between March 24 and April 30 confessing their roles in the robbery, revealing several names and how they channelled a portion of the money to Naogaon.

“JMB is amassing money through robberies for reorganising,” said RMP Commissioner Md Mahbubur Rahman.

“The [militants] are now disorganised, they need a huge amount of money to get reorganised,” he told The Daily Star at his office recently.

The RMP boss said police learnt that the militants were using the mugged money especially for fighting legal battles and supporting the families of JMB men in jail.

He believes the JMB was behind another robbery attempt in which two bKash staff were shot in the city's Choddopai area on August 10, 2016. Rabiul Islam, one of the injured, died four days later.

The report of JMB getting involved in robbery first surfaced in 2000 when it was attacking offices of different NGOs, police say.

Following a pause of years, JMB's involvement in robbery came to light again in 2014 when investigators found them engaged in robbing Tk 6 lakh at a bKash shop in Kaunia of Rangpur, Tk 35 lakh from a garment factory in Gazipur and Tk 28 lakh in Baliadangi of Takhurgaon.

On December 21, 2015, locals caught four armed JMB members red-handed when the militants attempted a robbery at a filling station in Dinajpur. Sabbir, one of the militants, was killed in a mob beating while the rest three revealed JMB's role in the robbery, police say.

The four suspected militants who confessed to the October robbery in Rajshahi include Shafiqur Rahman Uzzal, an English teacher at Dakra Degree College in Charghat.

The others are Ibrahim Sarker alias Baki alias Abir, a second-year Management student of Rajshahi City College; Asadul Islam alias Asad, an HSC-passed grocery shop manager, and Babar Ali. The fifth arrestee, Shahin of Charghat, refused to confess.

In the statements, Shafiqur and Ibrahim revealed that the JMB operates in two wings -- Dayee and Isaba. The Dayee motivates and recruits people and also monitors and cooperates with its operational wing Isaba.

The Isaba wing's Rajshahi chief Bulbul alias Sohag alias Jubayer led a group of 10 who were directly involved in the robbery.

Of the group, college student Ibrahim was Dayee chief at Puthia, and Masud Rana, a Dayee leader of Charghat, joined Bulbul's group before the robbery. Others are -- Shahin, Darjee Mizan, Daktar Mizan alias Nayan, a quack, and Babar.

The Daily Star could not know the names of other three. Investigators only said they include a Rajshahi University student who was a “key person” in the robbery.

The robbery was planned at a meeting at Shahin's house in Charghat. Darjee Mizan provided the operation team with the jackets of detectives and Bulbul supplied two pistols and two motorcycles.

On the day of robbery, Daktar Mizan, Ibrahim, Babar and another unknown man watched the jute spinning factory's officials at different points on the road from the bank.

Six JMB men -- Bulbul, the RU student, Masud Rana, Shahin, Darjee Mizan and an unidentified person -- robbed the money.

The investigators were yet to know where Tk 9.70 lakh of the total robbed money went. They learnt that the perpetrators went to Darjee Mizan's house at Charghat with the rest Tk 7.80 lakh hours after the robbery. Bulbul gave the money to Asad in a black bag and asked him to take it to the house of college teacher Shafiqur.

Two days later, following Bulbul's instruction, Asad collected Tk 1 lakh from Shafiqur's house and gave it to Bulbul.

Four days after the robbery, Ibrahim in his statement says, as per instruction from Naogaon's Hafizul Islam alias Saidul, he collected Tk 6.80 lakh from Shafiqur.

The next day he met Saidul in Railgate area of Rajshahi city and they together transported the money to Manda of Naogaon from where Saidul and Toukir took it to an unknown destination.

The college teacher's father Siddikur Rahman, a retired sub-inspector of police, however, claimed his son was forced to make the confessional statement.

Quoting Shafiqur, he said the detectives picked up his son and kept him confined to an unknown place for six days until he agreed to make the statement on March 30.

The RMP commissioner rejected the allegations and said the police were unaware of Shafiqur's whereabouts before his arrest.

According to officials, Shafiqur told interrogators that engaging in militant activities for jihad and simultaneously continuing as a teacher appeared to him necessary since he pledged his allegiance to JMB in 2015.