DHAKA, Aug. 23 -- Indian investigators call him most wanted. Ten cases stand open against him at police stations across India. The Bangladeshi counter-terrorism officers who questioned him for sixteen days after his arrest concluded he was the second-ranking figure in al-Qaeda's South Asian branch and the head of its propaganda wing. On 10 October 2024 he walked out of Kashimpur High Security Central Jail in Gazipur on bail, and nobody in authority appears to have located him since.

About a month ago intelligence officers went looking for Maulana Ikramul Haque at his family's house in Bororchar, in Mymensingh Sadar. They spoke to people in the neighbourhood, including a Union Parishad member, and then to his father. They left without him...