In a major concern for India’s national security, the caretaker government of Bangladesh on Monday (Aug 26) released the chief of an al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorist outfit. Jashimuddin Rahmani, the chief of the Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT), was released on parole on Monday, reported local media. He was jailed for the murder of a blogger back in 2013.
His ABT was outlawed in Bangladesh in 2015 under the regime of now-ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. The radical outfit re-emerged as Ansar al-Islam in 2017 but was again banned by the Hasina government.
He was freed from the Kashimpur High-Security Central Jail in Gazipur.
The development comes as a shock for India as the terror group has been eying to deepen its roots across the border, with the help of its sleeper cells.
Why India should be worried
The ABT group has long been trying to establish its terror network in India and its operatives have been arrested by Indian armed forces in the past. Police in the northeastern Indian state of Assam detained two ABT terrorists, namely Bahar Mia and Rarely Mia, from the Guwahati railway station in May earlier this year.
ABT is directly linked to al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) group, which is banned in India.
ABT has reportedly joined forces with Pakistan-based outlets to carry out terror attacks in northeast India. Pakistan’s Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) had even collaborated with ABT in 2022 to set up a terror launch pad to target sites in India, as per media reports.
In 2022, around 100 ABT operatives were allegedly trying to enter the Indian state of Tripura.
Hasina, a close ally of India, always kept New Delhi’s national security interests in mind and cracked down on Islamist forces in Bangladesh, which contributed to peace in this part of South Asia.
It’s concerning that not just Rahmani, but several extremists have escaped jail since the ouster of ex-PM Hasina. An armed mob attack on a high-security prison in Sherpur (northern Bangladesh, bordering Meghalaya) on August 6 led to the escape of around 500 inmates, one of them being Ikramul Haque alias Abu Talha, the India operations head of Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT).
(With inputs from agencies)
Vikrant Singh
Images are for reference only.Images and contents gathered automatic from google or 3rd party sources.All rights on the images and contents are with their legal original owners.
Comments are closed, but trackbacks and pingbacks are open.