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Arrestee is not Abdur Rahman?
 West Bengal police yesterday confirmed that they had not arrested Shaekh Abdur Rahman, the chief of banned Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), as the issue remained the talk of the country for the last two days.
| "Nope. Sorry. Wudn't him. It wuz... ummm... some guy named Herb." |
The confirmation followed reports on Monday and yesterday by wire services and local media about the arrest of the supreme leader of JMB, responsible for countrywide bomb attacks on August 17 and subsequent suicide bombings. Our Delhi correspondent reports that it was in fact a case of mistaken identity. A 23-year-old youth named Obaidur Rahman, who had been staying illegally in a West Bengal village for several months, was taken for JMB chief Abdur Rahman.
| Right. They mistook a 23-year-old yoot for a 45-year-old holy man with a hennaed beard. I'll buy that for a dollar. |
Two Bangla and an English dailies on Monday carried reports saying that Indian police arrested Rahman the previous day. AFP quoting Inspector General of West Bengal police Raj Kanojia yesterday reported that Abdur Rahman was arrested along with a relative on Sunday while attending a wedding ceremony in the village of Joragachha near the Bangladesh border. The news agency also quoted Kanojia as saying that Rahman had entered India a few weeks after the 17 August blasts and taken refuge in a relative's house in a village 250 kilometres north of Kolkata. Superintendent of Police (SP) in Murshidabad Niraj Singh said the militant kingpin has been charged with travelling India without proper documents. He was remanded in police custody by a district court on Monday, according to the AFP report. Police were interrogating him to establish his link to the August 17 blasts in Bangladesh. He would be produced before the court again on Wednesday, it added.
But private TV channel ATN reported yesterday evening that Abdur Rahman was not arrested. Rather a youth from northern Bangladesh district Bogra was held in Murshidabad. He introduced him as Obaidur Rahman, a student of sociology department of Dhaka University, ATN said, quoting Kolkata IGP (Law and Order) Raj Kanojia.
Posted by: Fred 2006-01-25 |
