Jalpaiguri blast mastermind held

(WB), Jan 29: The police today arrested three Kamtapur Liberation Organisation (KLO) ultras, including the mastermind of the December 26 blast in Jalpaiguri that left six persons dead.

Three KLO persons -- two senior leaders and a courier -- were arrested from Adhikari from near the Indo-Nepal border in Darjeeling district, IG (North Bengal) Jawed Shamim said.

The three are KLO Deputy Commandant Ilyias Siddiqui alias Pradip Roy, KLO Assistant General Secretary Tarun Thapa alias Narayan Roy and Ramshankar Basak, a courier. While the first two had plotted the bicycle blast at Bajrapara on December 26, the martyrs' day of the KLO, Basak had kept the bicycle at the spot, Shamim told a press conference this evening.

The IG said the arrested persons admitted during interrogation that they had executed the blast. A day after the explosion, the KLO had denied its involvement in the incident saying that the police were trying to malign the organisation.

The police were now investigating to arrest the other persons involved in the explosion. Besides these three who were taken into custody from Darjeeling district, five others have earlier been arrested in connection with the blast in Jalpaiguri district.

Formed in 1993, the KLO was fighting for a separate Kamtapuri state comprising six districts of north Bengal and some areas of Lower Assam.

PTI