The intact grenades that police recovered from Hussaini Dalan after Saturday's blasts are similar to those recovered from Kamrangirchar and Chittagong earlier this month.
Investigators say that not only are these bombs similar, chances are very high that they had actually been made by the same person or group.
In the early hours of Saturday, several handmade grenades were exploded in the Hussaini Dalan area in the capital city’s Nazimuddin Road when Shia Muslim devotees were preparing for the traditional Tazia procession.
A teenager was killed and more than a hundred were injured in what is said to be the first such attack on Shia Muslims in Bangladesh.
Police later found four grenade pins and one intact grenade that did not go off and was still there at the scene after the blasts.
The case statement that police filed yesterday in connection with the attack says the blasts were made by anonymous criminal groups as part of a conspiracy and plan to destroy the existing unity among people and disturb public security.
Sanowar Hossain, a high official of Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP)’s Detective Branch (DB), said yesterday that the grenades – both those that went off and the one that did not – were handmade and were of poor quality.
On October 5, detectives in Chittagong arrested five members of banned Islamist militant outfit JMB and seized nine hand grenades and a huge cache of bomb-making paraphernalia from their possession.
A couple of weeks later, on October 22, police in Dhaka recovered several hand-made grenades from a house in the Kamrangirchar area in the outskirts of the capital city.
A high official of police who works at the force’s headquarters said yesterday that the pins, screws and tapes used in the bombs recovered in Chittagong and Kamrangirchar were similar to those that exploded in Hussaini Dalan.
Generally, locally made grenades have the pins welded; the pins in imported good quality grenades are not welded, he said.
Moreover, just like those recovered earlier this month, the unexploded grenade from Saturday also had a unique number inscribed on it.
“We are suspecting that the same group of people are making and distributing these grenades in the country to carry out sabotages,” the official said, strongly requesting anonymity.
Twitter activities
A cyber security expert said yesterday that the tweet that claimed responsibility of the Hussaini Dalan blasts come from the same source that also claimed the responsibilities for Tavella and Hoshi murders.
Tanvir Hssan Joha, who has been providing law enforcers with assistance on cyber security, yesterday said: “Electronic evidence shows that people who are creating anarchy in the country by killing bloggers, foreigners and other activities and are then tweeting, are all from the same group.”
Two foreign nationals – Cesare Tavella, Italian, and Hoshi Kunio, Japanese – were killed in the same fashion within five days about a month ago.
After both the murders – in which armed criminals came on motorbikes and shot the two foreigners dead – international Islamist militant organisation Islamic State (IS) claimed responsibility through Twitter posts.
After Saturday’s blast as well, similar tweets that claimed responsibility for the blasts, came from groups that call themselves the IS.
The government, however, has been claiming from the beginning that IS does not have any existence in Bangladesh.
Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal said yesterday: “HujiB, JMB, Ansarullah Bangla Team or Chhatra Shibir, they are all from the same platform and are interlinked. We are investigating the matter and are hopeful to make a breakthrough soon.”
