Bangladesh police detain two couples planning to 'flee' to Pakistan

Dhaka: Bangladesh police have detained two couples belonging to the terror outfit Neo-Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) on suspicion they were planning to flee to Pakistan.

Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) said on Wednesday that Shariful Islam alias Mahmud, his wife Marjiya Akter Shumi, and Aminul Islam and his wife Nahid Sultana, had "plans to flee abroad". The documents recovered from their driver "prove they were preparing to flee to Pakistan", reported Dhaka Tribune. 

RAB's Legal and Media Wing Chief Mufti Mahmud Khan said that acting on a tip-off, a police team detained Mahmud, Shumi and Aminul from a restaurant opposite to Ananda Cinema Hall in Farmgate past midnight.

Khan said that Nahid and Aminul handled the "post recruitment procedures" of New JMB and decided who would join which squad.

The detention of the four comes after four women militants of JMB, aged between 18 and 30, were arrested on Monday during a raid in Sirajganj. Police also seized a large quantity of bomb-making materials, six improvised bombs, nine Jihadi books, four grenade shells and electrical equipment from the den. 

The detentions also comes days after Tamim Ahmed Chowdhury, the "mastermind" of the Dhaka cafe terror attack and who police said had reorganised Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh as Neo-JMB, was killed in a raid on a house in Narayanganj along with two others on August 27. Tamim's deputy Mohammad Jahidul Islam was killed in a raid in Mirpur on September 2.

The JMB, founded in 1998, is an Islamic fundamentalist organisation, operating in Bangladesh. It gained public prominence in 2001 when bombs and documents detailing the activities of the organization were discovered in Parbatipur in Dinajpur district.