Bangladesh Police arrests Indian citizen in Dhaka for recruiting neo JMB cadres

Kolkata: Bangladesh Police’s Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime (CTTC) branch on Friday arrested a 25-year-old Indian girl from Sadarghat in Dhaka with alleged links to neo Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB). She was tasked with recruiting young Indian girls for JMB's women's wing. 

According to CTTC officials, the girl, identified as Ayesha Jannat Mohona is an Indian national and an Indian passport was found in her possession. 

“Acting on a tip off, a team of CTTC officials conducted a raid at Sadarghat and arrested Ayesha Jannat Mohona. The arrest was made in connection with an earlier case registered at Motijheel police station. We have produced her before the court and she has been remanded to four days of police custody,” Sk Imran Hossain, Assistant Commissioner, CTTC said in a media briefing. 

Preliminary investigation by CTTC officials have found that the said girl, Ayesha hails from Bengal’s Hooghly district. Ayesha’s roots have been traced to the Keshabpur village under Dhaniakhali police station limits. 

“Ayesha was born Hindu as Pragya Debnath and converted to Islam in the year 2009 when since then she got actively involved in religious lessons online,” Hossain added. 

During her online religious lessons, she got in touch with the women’s wing chief, Asma Khatoon and from 2009 till 2016 Ayesha got actively involved in neo JMB women’s wing. 

“Besides raising funds for the banned terrorist outfit, she was given the responsibility to recruit young girls for the women’s wing especially from India. Infact, in the last couple of months, she has recruited some people too. We are going to investigate all angles,” said a senior official of CTTC. 

The CTTC officials will interrogate her over the next four days to nab her associates. 

In 2016, Ayesha undertook her first journey to Bangladesh from West Bengal since then she has traveled several times to and from Bangladesh. She even procured a fake Bangladeshi birth certificate and a fake  national identity card of Bangladesh. 

In 2019, she permanently moved to Bangladesh and started working as a teacher in a local madrasa where the young female students were radicalised and recruited. Later that year, she married a Bangladeshi national based out of Oman. 

However, her plans hit a hurdle when Asma Khatoon was arrested by the police. Immediately, she quit working at the madrasa and started focusing on online recruitment drive for the neo JMB women's wing.