On Thursday, the Calcutta City Session Court in Kolkata convicted a Bangladeshi man and a member of Jammat-Ul-Mujahideen, Rahmatullah alias Sajid, and an Indian National named Mohammed Burhan SK on charges of terror financing under the under Section 3 of Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 (PMLA).
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The duo was booked in 2014 by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) under the Explosive Substances Act and Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA). The quantum of punishment would be announced on March 17. The Enforcement Directorate (ED) filed a charge sheet under PMLA in November 2018 and had attached two land plots and bank accounts.
On October 2, 2014, 2 people had died in an explosion that took place at a house in Khagragarh locality of Burdwan, West Bengal. The case record stated that the terrorist attack was a part of a larger conspiracy of radical Islamist organisation JMB operating out of Bangladesh.
Prevention of Money Laundering Act was enacted in 2002 and implemented in 2005 to check tax evasion and money laundering. The conviction by the Session Court is the 10th conviction in India under the stringent law.
The first conviction under PMLA was related to corruption case linked to Madhu Koda, former Jharkhand Chief Minister, and the second case was related to narcotics. In 2017, a Pakistani terrorist affiliated to Al-Badr was convicted under PMLA by a Bengaluru court.
Last year in December, Mohammad Belal, a Bangladeshi Muslim man from Sylhet district of Bangladesh, was nabbed by the police officials for travelling in the Amritsar-Kolkata Durgiana Express without a ticket. During interrogation, the accused has confessed that he is a Bangladeshi and had illegally obtained fake Aadhaar and Indian voter cards from in North 24 Parganas district of West Bengal.