DHAKA: A recent New York Times article on the rise of Islamist militancy in certain parts of northern Bangladesh has sparked off multi-dimensional repercussions in different quarters here.

The article - 'The Next Islamist Revolution?' - The New York Times published on January 23, claimed that some 10,000 Islamists had regrouped, under the banner of Jagrata Muslim Janata (JMJ), in northern Bangladesh to "try an Islamist revolution in several provinces of Bangladesh that border on India".

The author of the article, Eleza Griswold, a freelance writer, reportedly interviewed the leader of the Islamist group, locally known as Bangla Bhai, in the latter's home town, claimed that the group was still active, and that too with the help of the local police, to engineer an Islamic revolution.

The issue of Bangla Bhai became talk of the town this week, when two Dhaka-based Bangla daily simultaneously published the translated version of NYT article and some others carried news stories based on the piece.

The government reacted to the NYT article quickly. Dismissing the NYT report, the director general of the external publicity wing of the foreign ministry, Zahirul Haq, told the press that "the report does not reflect the real picture of Bangladesh".

"The situation in one of more than 70,000 villages cannot be representative of the entire country," said Haq, who found the NYT article "unfortunate and politically motivated".

The foreign ministry official also said that "some 1,400 foreign journalists had visited Bangladesh in the past three years, while none but three or four of them reported in such an unfortunate way". "Bangladesh is a democratic country and the people here are tolerant. There is no scope for an Islamist revolution here."

However, the deeds and misdeeds of the so-called Bangla Bhai, a self-styled vigilante, began to catch media attention since he launched operation in Bagmara Upajial (sub-district), an area known for armed political activism by some ultra-left groups, on April 1, 2004.

In May last year, the militant zealots led by Bangla Bhai had literally taken the law in their own hands in Bagmara and the neighbouring rural backyard of the north western district of Rajshahi.

They were administering the so-called vigilante justice to those whom they branded as terrorists belonging to nominal leftist underground groups. Since then, the group has reportedly tortured to death 22 members of the leftist groups and maimed dozens of others.

The national dailies of the country have routinely covered those incidents of murders, while many a newspaper alleging that the government of Khaleda Zia was giving indulgence to the notorious Bangla Bhai and his Islamist fundamentalist group.

The issue was taken over, for the time being, by the grenade attack on an Awami League rally in Dhaka on August 21 last year that eventually left 21 people killed.

However, the timing of the NYT article, coincided a gory story of three of Bangla Bhai's followers being lynched in a counter mob-justice on January 23, after the JMJ men killed a local leader of Awami League, the main opposition party in Bangladesh.

Earlier, the followers of Bangla Bhai reportedly asked the AL leader either to quit his party or to face dire consequences. The incident, coupled with NYT article published in the Dhaka based newspapers, has revived the issue again, and that too with a lot of media criticism, not mention that of the opposition political camp, against the government for its failure to nab Bangla Bhai.

"The abettors of Bangla Bhai in the Rajshahi administration or in the ruling circles, having either legislative or local party authority, or being among the BNP or its coalition partners, got away with their partnership with vigilante criminality in a slippage of sorts among other drastic events," wrote Enayetullah Khan, a senior journalist who edits daily New Age, in a front-page commentary on January 26.

Notably, the Ministry of Home Affairs gave the first arrest order after the opposition Awami League submitted a memorandum to the representatives of bilateral and multilateral lending agencies during the Bangladesh Development Forum 2004 on May 11, referring to the operations Bangla Bhai.

On May 15, the cabinet committee on law and order gave the second order for arresting the vigilante leader as some senior ministers felt that such operations would damage the image of the country and the government internationally.

Prime minister Khaleda Zia summoned the state minister for home affairs, Lutfozzaman Babar, to her office on May 22 and asked him to put the man behind bars and stop his group's activities without further delay.

But the next day, on May 23, people of Rajshahi witnessed a unique scene as over 6,000 militants of the outfit openly demonstrated in the town amid heavy police protection.

Police claim that they cannot arrest Bangla Bhai because he has gone into hiding since May 25 along with more than 2,000 followers. Hardly anybody buy the police tale, while speculation is there that an accomplice in the ruling four-party alliance is out to save Bangla Bhai for narrow partisan interests in the locality concerned.

Lutfuzzaman Babar, however, declined to comment on the fresh violence at Bagmara villages in Rajshahi where four persons, including three members of Bangla Bhai's JMJ, were killed.

Meanwhile, Sheikh Hasina, president of Awami League, in a press statement on Tuesday accused the government of "letting loose communal extremist Forces" like the Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh, led by Bangla Bhai, to eliminate "non-communal democratic forces".