The Italian Embassy has said it would receive the body of Cesare Tavella within the next few days and make necessary arrangements to carry the body back to Italy.
“The Italian Embassy informed that they will take Tavella’s body within a few days after completing all formalities regarding receiving the body,” said Mafuzul Islam, additional deputy commissioner of Dhaka Metropolitan Police Detective Branch (North Zone).
The process may take two to three days as the embassy would also have to arrange an aircraft to carry Tavella’s body, he told the Dhaka Tribune yesterday.
The body of Tavella, an Italian citizen who was gunned down in the Gulshan diplomatic zone on September 28, has been kept at the Dhaka Medical College Hospital since September 29, according to police sources.
Meanwhile, Mahbub Alam, the DB official heading the Tavella murder investigation, has told the Dhaka Tribune that the law enforcement agency would seek assistance from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation to help solve the case.
Mahbub, the deputy commissioner for the DB’s east zone, said a meeting would soon be held to decide what sort of help should be sought from the FBI.
Even though the police have looked through CCTV camera footages from near the crime scene, all they have found so far are low-quality images. Cameras in the area also failed to capture any significant clue as most of the devices were used to cover building premises only, said sources in the DMP.
One of the possible leads from the footages was the image of three people riding a bike together; however, officials said it was also possible that they were not the suspects as one of the killers was allegedly on his feet during the shooting.
On the evening of September 28, three unidentified assailants shot and killed Tavella as he was returning to his home.
Later, the country representative of ICCO, the Netherlands-based organisation where Tavella worked, filed a murder case with Gulshan police station.
Although 10 days have passed since the killing, investigators have neither made any significant progress in the case nor made any arrest.