Burdwan blast: 4 Bangladeshis jailed for 10yrs

A total of 19 persons, including four Bangladeshi nationals, have been sentenced to different terms of jail in a case filed over the infamous bomb blast which took place in West Bengal's Burdwan district in 2014.

The four Bangladeshis were jailed for 10 years, our Kolkata correspondent reports.

Among the Indian convicts, two female convicts were jailed for six years and others for eight years each, a lawyer said.

The convicted four Bangladeshi nationals are: Sheikh Rahmatullah alias Sajid alias Burhan Sheikh alias Surot Ali, Sadiq alias Sumon alias Tarikul Islam alias Raihan Sheikh, Liakot Ali Pramanik alias Rafique alias Rafiqul alias Mohammad Rubel, and Habibur Raman alias Jahidul Islam alias Jabirul Islam alias Zafar.

The Special NIA Court in Kolkata handed down the sentence to the convicts today two days after it found them guilty in the blast case on Wednesday.

The National Investigation Agency (NIA) of India, in a statement, said the NIA Court of Kolkata on August 28 convicted 19 accused for all the charges against them after they pleaded guilty to the charges in the case.

On October 2 in 2014, a powerful bomb (IED) blast took place at the first floor of a rented house in the busy Khagragarh locality of Burdwan District of West Bengal at about 12:15pm.

The IED had accidentally gone off at the time of its making by the members of banned terrorist outfit Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB).

The rented house was occupied by the members of JMB, ostensibly for Burkha Stitching though in reality it was being used for nefarious activity of bomb making, the NIA statement said.

Two accused persons in the case had succumbed to their injuries caused due to bomb blast and one accused survived with grievous injuries.

The case was initially registered by West Bengal Police, which was subsequently taken over by NIA for investigation.

The investigation by NIA revealed a conspiracy by JMB to radicalise, recruit and provide training in arms and explosives to its members in India as well as to commit terrorist acts and wage war against the democratically established Governments of India and Bangladesh, according to the NIA statement.

A large number of IEDs, explosives, hand grenades, training videos were recovered during the investigation of the case.