More than a month after an accidental explosion killed two persons in Khagragarh, in the process blowing the lid off of a flourishing bomb industry in West Bengal’s Burdwan district, the police are yet to confirm the identity of one of victims.
In his dying statement, the victim had given his name as Subhan Mondal, a resident of East Midnapaore district. However, police could not find the village Mondal claimed to have hailed from.
One of the two persons, other being Shakeel Ahmed who too died in the blast, assigned with the task of assembling bombs at the Khagragarh house, Mondal, the National Investigation Agency sleuths believe, was a resident of Bangladesh. His actual identity has remained a missing link in the investigations into the October 2 blast.
According to sources, the two women arrested in connection with the case, Alima Bibi, wife of Abdul Hakim, the suspected terrorist who survived the Khagragarh blast, Razia Bibi, wife of Shakeel Ahmed, could not tell the investigators about Mondal’s actual identity. Razia Bibi reportedly claimed that Mondal was known only to her husband who used to introduce him as a “business partner”.
Best of Express Premium
The NIA has now opted for Mondal’s DNA profiling to establish his identity. A Central Forensic Science Laboratory team recently visited the police morgue in Burdwan and collected samples from Mondal’s teeth, hair and nails for for DNA testing. An NIA team scheduled to visit Bangladesh next week would hand over the DNA profile to that country’s police for matching it with the criminal data base there.
A CFSL team that had recently visited a wok factory where Hakim used to work, failed to find any significant clues. The NIA, meanwhile, has detained one Seesh Mohammad from Jamshedpur who is suspected to have links with the Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh.
- The Indian Express website has been rated GREEN for its credibility and trustworthiness by Newsguard, a global service that rates news sources for their journalistic standards.
