Within about a month after the blast perpetrated by a little-known underground armed group, Samyukta Jatiya Mukti Morcha (SJMM), Metropolitan Police Crime Division (MPCD) has received over a dozen complaints about serious phone threats and extortion. Of these, two cases have already been resolved along with the arrest of two individuals who were allegedly involved. [break]
“It is a general trend that criminals try to benefit from serious incidents. Criminal psychology takes effect when there is significant terror in society,” said Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Devendra Subedi, the MPCD chief.
The Babarmahal bombing was expected to trigger an even larger number of such complaints as it was carried out by an underground terrorist group, officials said.
“We had expected relatively more of them. Regardless of the number, all the cases seem to have been spurred by the Babarmahal blast,” said an investigation official.
Even a couple of cases of extortion effort by SJMM reached MPCD shortly after the blast. A number of similar cases concerning the same group had surfaced prior to the incident. The phenomenon, officials said, was understandably normal.
What amazes officials is the ´re-emergence´ in the post-blast opportunistic criminal scene of a group that had been considered defunct after the apprehension of the kingpin and other crackdowns. “Our observation is that this is just to terrorize people and extort from them. It has hardly anything to do with the big incident itself,” said officials.
This a trend noted to varying degrees after almost every major criminal incident in the capital. After the Faizan shooting six months ago, some 40 complaints about threats by phone and extortion were registered. Even though it was apparent within a few days that local criminals were not involved in the murder, the incident was used by different individuals and groups to intimidate people and extort.
“Very interestingly, even a husband-and-wife dispute landed here in the same way,” said an official.
Police take complaints about phone threats and extortions from every unit and MPCD and the Central Bureau of Investigation generally tackle the special cases.
According to MPCD, phone threats and extortions spurted spectacularly in the aftermath of big criminal incidents like the Tripureshwor bombing, the Assumption Chruch blast and the Jamim murder. Even individual shootings up the trend, officials said.
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