Don’t speculate about Jaipur blasts: Bangladesh

Security officials in Bangladesh said HuJI, designated US as 'foreign terrorist organisation', had been marginalised.

With the needle of suspicion in the deadly Jaipur blasts pointing to a Bangladesh-based militant outfit, Dhaka has asked the media not to jump to a conclusion about perpetrators of the terror attack.

“The media should not jump to a conclusion before investigations are completed,” Foreign Affairs Advisor Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury said on Saturday night renewing his call made soon after the Tuesday bombings, as Indian media reported that Harkat-ul Jihad al-Islami (HuJI) could be involved in the attack that left over 60 people dead.

Chowdhury earlier, however, had said the terrorists who carried out ‘these sordid and heinous deeds have no boundaries’ as he strongly condemned the attack calling it a ‘mindless and shameful act’.

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Security officials in Bangladesh said HuJI, designated earlier by the United States as ‘foreign terrorist organisation’, had been marginalised as they spearheaded a massive campaign against the outlawed Bangladeshi outfit and other extreme right-wing militant groups in recent months.

“Bangladesh banned the HuJI group years ago after it was banned in the United States and other countries as a top militant organisation,” elite anti-crime Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) chief Hasan Mahmood Khandaker said recently.

RAB and police officials said currently HuJi did not have any organisational strength as 64 operatives of the outfit, including Mufti Abdul Hannan and Mufti Abdur Rauf, are already behind the bar while campaigns are underway to arrest its other suspected activists.

The HuJi is also believed to have carried out the deadly August 2004 grenade attack on former Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. She narrowly escaped the attack but 24 others lost their lives and scores were injured.

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