The National Investigation Agency (NIA) arrested Adil Asadullah, allegedly a member of the Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), at an auto-rickshaw stand near Cantonment railway station on Tuesday. According to NIA officials, Asadullah, 29, is a close associate of terror suspect Mohammed Jahidul Islam alias Munir Sheikh, 38, who had been arrested earlier this week in Ramanagaram and is wanted in connection with several terror cases in India and Bangladesh.
The NIA recovered three mobile phones, bank slips, hand-written notes and a book with notes on chemical formulae for Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) from Asadullah. It was Sheikh’s arrest that led the NIA to him.
In a press release, NIA said that Sheikh, a native of Jamalpur in Bangladesh, was the mastermind behind the planting of an IED at Kalachakra Maidan in Bodh Gaya, Bihar on January 19, 2018.
NIA officials claim that Sheikh is a member of the shura (council) of JMB. He was involved in several serial blast cases in Bangladesh and also in the attack on a police van in Trishal, Bangladesh. He was sentenced to 95 years’ imprisonment in total by courts in Bangladesh. He escaped in 2014 and entered India illegally. He was part of a JMB module involved in preparation of IEDs in Burdwan, West Bengal, an NIA official said.
The NIA have taken both Sheikh and Asadullah into custody for questioning to ascertain whether they had a plan to execute any subversive activity in and around Bengaluru.
