41 cases under trial 17 years on

The trail of cases filed in connection with the countrywide series bomb blasts on August 17 in 2005 are yet to be completed although 17 years have passed.  
At least 41 cases are still under prosecution. The banned outfit Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) carried out attacks in 434 places of 63 out of 64 districts only to show their power.  Militants now may not have carried out attacks in recent years but are active online.
Recent reports have drawn attention to the arrest of nearly 500 Islamist militants over the past year and to the online activity of militant organizations. Terrorist organizations also use different social media outlets and encrypted messaging apps to reach Bangladeshi youth. These outlets include Facebook, Telegram, YouTube and ChirpWire.
 As many as 118 cases out of 159 in connection with the series bomb blasts have so far been disposed of in connection with
countrywide series bomb blasts in 2005.
In the cases, different courts sentenced at least 307 people. Of them 15 people were awarded death sentences while 193 were given life term and 247 others to various prison terms. Several militants were released from jail and were rehabilitated to normal life. Over 1,200 people were arrested at different times in connection with the series bomb blasts on August 17. Some 988 people are now in jail in blast cases.
In Dhaka, 17 cases were filed after the series blast. Of them, five cases have been dissolved, final reports have been submitted in six cases while five cases are being tried in Dhaka Judicial Court.
Militant outfit JMB drew attention with the 2001 Satkhira cinema  bombing. The group carried out nearly 50 attacks at different places of Bangladesh since then, killing at least 100 people until 2013.
Meanwhile, law enforcers failed to arrest Salahuddin alias Salehin, chief of the terrorist group old Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), who is hiding somewhere in India.
Salehin, ambushed in film style a prison van at Trishal in Mymensingh in 2014, Salahuddin has been out of reach of the security services, despite their success in arresting many top terrorists in recent times. Salehin has  also been sentenced to death in the series bomb blast case, according to sources.
Law enforcers believed Salahuddin alias Salehin, chief of JMB is hiding in Afghanistan.
Investigators said although their activities were now off and on, 'they no more have the capacity like they had in the past as almost all of their leaders have been arrested and many of them hanged.'
Excepting for two top leaders - Shayakh Abdur Rahman and Siddiqul Islam, commonly known as Bangla Bhai - the authorities are yet to punish the field-level executors of the serial blasts that portrayed the secular country as a "new breeding ground of Islamic militancy" globally, harming its economic potentiality.
The military-led interim government on March 29 in 2007 executed six JMB men including the duo as the court handed down capital punishment, destroying the JMB network.