Rapid Action Battalion-12 discovered a new militant organisation who go by the acronym BEM, from a student hostel at Thonthonia in Bogra town Thursday afternoon, set up in the same style as banned militant organisation Jamaat-ul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), RAB officials confirmed at a press conference early Friday.
Eighteen suspected militants had rented the house a few days back, in the name of opening a coaching centre, RAB officials said, quoting local people.
Based on secret information, five plain-clothes RAB personnel led by Miran Hossain, company commander of Rab-12, raided a three-room tin-roofed house in an alley at Thonthonia paschim para at about 4:30pm, said ATM Habibur Rahman, RAB’s legal and media wing director.
As soon as they gave their identities, the militants engaged in a scuffle with RAB members that left four lawmen injured, he said.
Later they called in other law enforcers and arrested three from the scene, while others managed to flee, he added.
The RAB men seized one foreign-made modern light machine gun (LMG), one Germany-made sub-machine gun (SMG) rifle, one American-made pistol with seven round of bullets, a binocular, one ammunition drum with 80 round of bullets, a huge amount of Jihadist books, locally-made weapons and some fighter training tools.
The arrested were Firoz Alam, 35, Mohammad Nahid Alam, 20, and Mohammad Barha Sheikh alias Babu, 21.
The BEM has infantry wing, tactics wing, intelligence wing and investigative wing. The militant members were taking training on map-reading in military-style, in their dwelling place, Habibur Rahman told journalists.
The RAB team recovered a training schedule and arms list from the spot. The training took place from 1:00am to 4:00am, he added.
The arrested were handed over to Bogra sadar police Thursday.
A case was filed in this regard.
