A female terror suspect held over in the 2017 blast during the anti-terror raid on a Dhaka hotel is set to be released after securing bail.
On Apr 5, counterterrorism police arrested Humayara alias Nabila from the capital’s Shidheshwari area.
Investigators said then she was responsible for the ‘sister wing’ of the neo-JMB, a splinter of banned Islamist group Jamaa'tul Mujahideen Bangladesh.
The neo-JMB has been blamed for several terror attacks in the recent years, including the one on the Gulshan cafe in 2016.
On Tuesday, a sessions judge’s court in Dhaka granted bail for Nabila, who has been kept at the women’s prison in Gazipur’s Kashimpur.
Jail Superintendent Mohammad Shahjahan said on Wednesday that they have received the bail documents.
“Humayara alias Nabila’s documents are with us. Her release is being processed,” he told Bangla Tribune.
Nabila and her husband Tanvir Karim, who was arrested late last year, allegedly financed a terror attack plan targeting last year’s Aug 15 National Mourning Day events at the Bangabandhu Memorial Museum.
It was foiled by a raid on the Hotel Olio International at Dhaka Panthapath, where a suspected militant blew himself up, according to CTTC officials.
On the morning of Aug 15 last year, the counterterrorism unit and SWAT raided the Hotel Olio International at the capital’s Panthapath.
The hotel is located some 300 metres away from the museum where mourners had gathered that day to pay respects to Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who was assassinated with most of his family members in a military putsch 42 years ago.
As police approached the terror suspect’s room, a bomb went off causing a portion of the building’s fourth-floor wall to collapse onto the street below.
The suspect, who was later identified as Saiful Islam, was found dead in the debris on the fourth floor.
Police had said he blew himself up to avoid arrest.
Daughter of a renowned businessman, Humaira, or Nabila, went to the North South University (NSU) after completing her studies from Viqarunnisa Noon School.
In NSU, she met Tazrin Khanam Shuvo, whose brother Akram Hossain Niloy is an important JMB leader.
It was Shuvo who radicalised Nabila, according to investigators.
After completing her under-graduation in business studies, Nabila enrolled in a master’s programme at Malaysia’s Lincoln University, where she met Shuvo’s brother Akram Hossain Niloy, a neo-JMB bigwig.
After returning to Dhaka, Nabila became the chief of the sister wing of JMB, and started going by the name "Bat Woman" in her own communication channel, according to investigators.
Counterterrorism officials said that Nabila confessed to them of her involvement in terrorist activities during interrogation in custody, but refused to provide a confessional statement before a magistrate.
“It’s takes a lot of hard work to identify a terrorist who acts a sleeper cell. It’s far from arresting regular criminal. Release of terror suspects on bail will only hinder the process of eliminating terrorism,” Deputy Commissioner Mahibul Islam of the Counterterrorism and Trans-national Crime Unit of the Dhaka metro police.