The police official claimed that extensive crackdowns on the militants after the attack on the Gulshan restaurant have broken down backbones of the armed activists.

The crackdowns on militants after the attack on Holey Artisan Bakery in Dhaka’s Gulshan on July 1 last year have made a significant progress in combating militancy, with killing 57 radicals and capturing 41 others of the banned militant outfits, Jama’atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) and neo-JMB.

"We have so far carried out 20 big anti-militant drives in different parts of the country after the Holey Artisan attack, in which 57 militants, mostly top leaders and operatives of the neo-JMB, were killed besides capturing 41 others," Assistant Inspector General of Police (confidential) Md Moniruzzaman said on the eve of one year of the brutal incident.

He said 11 law enforcers were killed during the anti-militant drives while over 50 cases have so far been lodged relating to the killings.

Moniruzzaman also noted that 13 more militants were killed in a series of anti-militant drives before the Holey Artisan attack when over 200 others were arrested.

The police official claimed that extensive crackdowns on the militants after the attack on the Gulshan restaurant have broken down backbones of the armed activists.

"Militants have lost their organisational capacity to carry out attacks on a large scale when security officials are detecting their locations and movements with intensified intelligence vigilance," he said.

"We have seen a rise in militancy from the very beginning of 2016 and later in the middle of the year the militant attacked the Holey Artisan Bakery," said a security and strategic analyst, Maj Gen Abdur Rashid (rtd).

He, however, admitted that the scenario changed after the bakery attack as the law enforcers conducted successful drives to combat terrorism.

"The activities of the militants have been brought under control as the law enforcers have successfully stopped regrouping of the neo JMB with killing and capturing its top leaders," additional commissioner of Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) and Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime (CCTC) chief Monirul Islam has said, according to BSS.