Bodh Gaya bomb plot reportedly meant to be revenge for Rohingya atrocities in Myanmar

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Security personnel inspect the explosion site after a serial blast at the Mahabodhi temple complex in Bodhgaya on Sunday.  (Photo courtesy: PTI)
Security personnel inspect the explosion site after a serial blast at the Mahabodhi temple complex in Bodhgaya on Sunday. (Photo courtesy: PTI)

(TibetanReview.net, Feb04, 2018) – Police in India have been cited as saying Feb 2 that members of Neo-JMB, a faction of Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), had planted the three bombs at Buddhism’s holiest site in Bodh Gaya to avenge the violence against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar. This referred to a low-intensity bomb which exploded on Jan 19 and two other high-yield explosives which were said to have been discovered when a search was carried out after it.

West Bengal police’s Special Task Force has said the two suspects they had arrested on Feb 1 had confessed to their involvement.

“We had recently detained some people from West Bengal and Assam whose interrogation led to the arrests of these two men. They have confessed they belong to Neo-JMB and that they were involved in the Bodh Gaya attack. They said the attack was meant to retaliate against atrocities committed against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar,” BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service, Feb 2 quoted task force chief Muralidhar Sharma as saying.

The report noted that Neo-JMB was the group that authorities in Bangladesh had blamed for a terrorist siege that killed 29 people, including 20 hostages and five gunmen, at an upscale café in Dhaka in Jul 2016. The extremist group Islamic State had claimed responsibility for that attack.

The two suspects are Indian nationals Mohammad Paigambar Sheikh, 24, and Jamirul Sheikh, 31, both residents of Murshidabad district in West Bengal.

Sharma has said the two accused men had “planted eight bombs” near the Kalachakra grounds where the Dalai Lama was giving as series of religious teachings. Which might suggest that the search carried out after the Jan 18 explosion was not all that thorough.

“Neo-JMB is the party that nurtures Islamic State’s ideology and is responsible for recent atrocities,” Monirul Islam, the chief of Bangladesh’s counter-terrorism and transnational unit, was quoted as having said last year.

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