A suspected associate of banned militant outfit Neo-JMB member Nazmul Hasan Mamun, alias “Bomaru Mamun”, was detained in Dhaka’s Demra on Sunday with two handmade bombs, police said.
Juel Bhuiyan, 26, was detained alongside another man during a raid in the Nizumbagh area of Boxnagar around 5:30pm.
Mohsin Masud, additional deputy commissioner of DMP’s Demra zone, told The Daily Star that police and members of the Anti-Terrorism Unit (ATU) raided the area on information that Juel had been staying there.
“Two handmade bombs were recovered during the raid,” he said, confirming that another person was also detained.
Police later cordoned off the house where Juel had been staying and searched the premises in the presence of members of different law enforcement agencies. The bombs were subsequently defused by a bomb disposal team of the Dhaka Metropolitan Police’s Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime (CTTC) unit, Mohsin said.
A CTTC official, requesting anonymity, told The Daily Star that said Juel is known as “Ostad” within the militant network and is believed to be closely associated with Mamun, who is suspected of having links to a network behind several recent explosions and bomb recoveries.
“The person arrested today -- Juel, also known as Ostad -- was in Narsingdi Jail in connection with a 2023 ATU case. In July, 2024, they initially escaped when the jail was stormed. Later, after being re-arrested and sent to Kashimpur, they got in touch with ‘Bomaru’ Mamun. By September, they all secured bail one by one and reorganised," he added.
According to CTTC officials, Mamun was previously arrested at the age of 21 on allegations of bomb-making. A bomb allegedly made by him was used in a suicide blast at Hotel Olio in Panthapath in 2017, which killed Saiful Islam. However, a Dhaka court acquitted Mamun and all other accused in the case in January.
Law enforcement officials said Mamun is suspected of involvement in several recent bomb-related incidents, including an explosion at a madrasa in Keraniganj, an attack on police in Jatrabari in February, a blast at a temple in Cumilla in March, and another explosion during a police search in Sayedabad.
On July 24, an improvised explosive device concealed inside an umbrella was found near Motijheel Metro Rail Station and later defused by the DMP bomb disposal unit. Later, bombs concealed inside pressure cookers were recovered from several locations in Savar, where Mamun was also suspected of involvement.
Most recently, on August 11, a man was arrested in Savar with six pipe bombs. A case was later filed under the Anti-Terrorism Act, naming six people, including Mamun, while six to seven others were kept unnamed.
