JMB militant gets 8 years in jail for prison break attempt
Times of India | 7 February 2026
Kolkata: A court in Kolkata has sentenced Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) militant Jahidul Islam to eight years in prison after he confessed to plotting a jail break while being transferred from Kolkata sessions court to Presidency Jail.
Chief judge Sukumar Roy of city sessions court held Islam guilty on Wednesday and imposed a fine of Rs 50,000, with an additional one year of imprisonment in default of payment. The court also awarded separate sentences on other counts, but directed all sentences to run concurrently.
Islam, aka Kausar and ‘Bomb Mizan' is the former operations chief of JMB in India. He is serving a 29-year sentence in connection with the Khagragarh explosion case, in which an accidental blast at a suspected bomb-making unit in 2014 led to a wider network linked to JMB.
The latest conviction relates to a separate case registered by the Kolkata Police Special Task Force (STF) after intelligence indicated a prison-break bid.
STF filed a charge sheet in the case in Feb 2019 against Islam and 10 others, charging them with criminal conspiracy, sedition and possession of explosives among others.