KOLKATA: A special NIA court on Wednesday sent Kausar, alias Boma Mizan — one of the main accused in the 2014 Khagragarh blast — to 29 years in prison, the longest term of the 31 who have been sentenced so far in the case.
The 35-year-old Bangladeshi is also an accused in the 2018 Bodh Gaya blast and other terror-linked cases. He was arrested by the NIA from Bengaluru in 2018.
Special NIA court judge Suvendu Samanta sentenced Kausar to five years each on five sections and two years each for two other offences, which he will have to undergo “consecutively”. He was also fined Rs 35,000.
“Kausar was convicted under various sections of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), for waging war against any Asiatic power which is in alliance with the government of India, the Foreigners’ Act and for criminal conspiracy,” said NIA counsel Shyamal Ghosh, adding, “I don’t recollect such a long sentence in any NIA case here in the last decade.”
In the blast at Khagragarh, Burdwan, on October 2, 2014, two suspected terrorists were killed and a third was injured while they were making bombs and explosive devices at a rented house. The investigation, which was first conducted by the state CID, was transferred to the NIA within a few days. A subsequent statement by the NIA said Kausar, a resident of Mymensingh in Bangladesh, “was the head of JMB (Jamat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh) in India, a proscribed organisation.”
Kausar, who studied at a polytechnic college at Tejgaon, Dhaka, got linked with JMB at an early age. After he came to India, he became active in districts like Howrah, South 24 Parganas and North 24 Parganas. He had developed contacts near Kolkata as well and used to collect funds for procuring arms and ammunition. The NIA recovered some video clips during searches and found that the arms being used to train youths at Khujutipara, a Birbhum camp, were procured from Kausar’s hideout. He used to stay at Babubag, about a kilometre from where the blast site. He went absconding on the day of the incident.
A total of 31 persons, of the 33 accused in the case, have been found guilty and sentenced so far. Two persons are absconding. The NIA had filed the primary chargesheet in the case in March 2015, saying there was a “conspiracy of JMB, a proscribed organisation in Bangladesh, to overthrow the existing government in Bangladesh through violent terrorist acts”. Of the persons accused in the case, six are Bangladeshis who were hiding in Bengal and trying to facilitate the JMB’s plan to create disturbances on both sides of the border.