Sharqiya militants were trying to regroup after arrest of most members: Police

After arresting three suspected operatives of Ansar Fil Hind Al-Sharqiya, police say the banned militant outfit was trying to scale up its operations with most of its members behind bars.

They also said the Islamist organisation paid tribal separatist group Kuki-Chin National Front a “huge” amount of money for training in the Chattogram Hill Tracts, a piece of information earlier revealed by the Rapid Action Battalion or RAB.

Additional Commissioner Harunor Rashid, who is heading Dhaka Metropolitan Police’s Detective Branch, briefed the media on Tuesday about the latest arrests of Rana Sheikh Amir Hossain, Mashiur Rahman alias Milon Talukder, and Habibur Rahman.

He said they were detained in the city’s Kalyanpur and Gabtoli, but would not reveal the time. With the three new arrestees, 49 members of the 53-strong organisation are behind bars, Harunor claimed.

“As most of their members have been arrested, they were trying to reorganise differently for the group’s survival. But the law-enforcing agencies are alert about them,” he said.

One of the three arrestees is the coordinator of the organisation’s Faridpur unit and another is a new recruit.

Rana Sheikh holds a Black Belt in martial arts. He went to Mymensingh in 2002 for training by Maulana Abdur Rauf, a death row convict and leader of Harkat-ul Jihad al-Islami or HuJI, according to Harunor.

The official said Rana studied in a madrasa there and took military training before being arrested by police in Boalmari.

Rana was working in an insurance company as a unit manager now and he had sent several new recruits to the hill tracts for training by KNF, aka the Bawm Party, Harunor said.

Rana had paid the Bawm Party more than Tk 100,000 in several instalments for the training, he said. Mashiur was a member of Islami Shasantantra Andolan before getting involved in the new militant group, according to the chief of DMP’s DB.

He was also arrested with grenades in Jhalakathi along with other HuJI leaders in 2013 and was jailed for four and a half years. Mashiur stayed in the hill tracts for around two years from 2021 for commando training, including on the use of assault rifles and making bombs, said Harunor.

Habibur, an insurance company employee, was a new recruit who joined the group through Rana.

The Bangladesh Army conducted an operation against the KNF in the wake of bloody clashes, bank robberies and weapons looting in the hill tracts.

A few dozen KNF members were arrested while the authorities warned tourists not to travel to the hills.

The Counterterrorism and Transnational Crime Unit had said that members of the banned militant outfits Harkatul Jihad, Ansar Al Islam and Jamaatul Mujahideen had formed the new armed group Sharqiya.