Bangladeshi JMB terrorist among two convicted for money laundering, terror financing

A Bangladeshi terrorist belonging to the JMB outfit has been convicted by a Kolkata court on charges of money laundering and terror financing, officials said on Thursday.

An Indian national too has been convicted in the case. This is probably the second case in which a foreign national has been found guilty by a court under the stringent provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), the officials said.

A Pakistani terrorist affiliated to Al-Badr was convicted under the anti-money laundering law by a Bengaluru court in 2017.

This is the 10th conviction under this law in the country. The law was enacted in 2002 and implemented from 2005 in order to check serious crimes of tax evasion and generation of black money.

Rahamatullah alias Sajid, a Bangladeshi national and member of Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), and Indian national Mohammed Burhan was convicted under Section 3 (offence or money laundering) of the PMLA by the city sessions court of Kolkata on Wednesday, officials said.

The quantum of sentence will be pronounced by the court on March 17, they added.

In 2014, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) booked the two and a few others under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) and the Explosive Substances Act.

On October 2 that year, as per the details of the case, an explosion took place in a house located at Khagragarh locality of Burdwan town in West Bengal leading to the death of two people and injuring a few others.

"It was a result of a larger ongoing conspiracy of JMB, an Islamic terrorist organisation operating primarily in Bangladesh," the case record stated.

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) filed a criminal case of money laundering in this case based on an FIR filed by the NIA and later attached, under PMLA, land plots in Simulia village of Burdwan and two bank accounts linked to the two convicts.

A chargesheet was filed by the ED's Kolkata zone in November 2018 in the case following which the convictions were pronounced.

The first two convictions under the PMLA in the country took place in the ED's Kolkata zone -- one was related to the alleged corruption and money laundering case linked to former Jharkhand chief minister Madhu Koda and the second connected to a narcotics case.