Nine militants held in city

Plainclothes policemen in a joint drive detained nine alleged members of two banned Islamic extremist outfits from the capital's Banasri and Sutrapur areas, police said.
They said the detainees were active members of Harkat-ul-Jihad (HuJI) and Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT), and they were preparing for bank robberies.
According to the DMP (Dhaka Metropolitan Police) media cell, Detective Branch (DB) of police along with Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime Unit and Special Branch (SB) launched the joint drive at a residential building at Banasri on Sunday afternoon, and arrested six suspected militants from its garage.
Based on their confessional statements, the combined team of police conducted another raid a few hours later at a house on Lalmohon Das Lane in Sutrapur and arrested three others from there.
When contacted, DB's ADC (Additional Deputy Commissioner) Sanowar Hossain said the arrestees from Sutrapur in preliminary interrogation admitted that they were planning to conduct bank robberies in Dhaka and North Bengal to generate fund for their organization.
He said a large quantities of explosives and books on jihad were also seized from their possession.
The police officer said the detained people wanted to form a jihadi group like Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in Bangladesh, and also wanted to draw attention of ISIS through their militant activities.
Four cases were filed with Khilgaon and Sutrapur police stations in this connection.
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