Local leaders of both the BNP and Awami League were involved in the murder of Ekramul Haq and plot of which was hatched around three months before the murder.
Investigators of the case yesterday divulged the information after interrogation of the arrestees.
The arrestees admitted that the killing was financed by local BNP leader Mahtab Uddin Chowdhury Minar while disgruntled local Awami League leaders joined the plot to kill the Fulgazi upazila chairman, they said.
Minar, who faced drubbing twice to Ekram in upazila polls, was arrested by the Detective Branch of police from the capital’s Mirpur area.
Masudur Rahman, deputy commissioner at the DMP Media Centre, said a team of Detective Branch’s North Division arrested Minar from a house at Dhaka Cantonment in Mirpur area in the afternoon.
Paritosh Gosh, superintendent of police in Feni, also confirmed Minar’s arrest and said the other culprits would also be arrested shortly.
Twenty-five-year-old Abidul Islam Abid, a key accused in the case, yesterday provided a confessional statement before a Feni court, narrating how the murder was executed.
In his confessional statement to Senior Judicial Magistrate Khairul Amin’s court, Abid – son of district Mohila Awami League secretary Layla Jesmin – said Ekram’s enmity with Jihad Chowdhury, the mastermind of the killing, developed when Jihad failed to run in the upazila election on Awami League ticket.
The conflict took a turn for the worse between the two when Ekram suspended Jihad from the local Awami League committee. However, local lawmaker Nizam Uddin Hazari intervened and the suspension order was withdrawn, police sources quoted Abid as saying.
On May 19, Jihad called a meeting with Abid, Shiblu, Ruti Sohel, Sifat and Adnan at the town’s Salam Community Centre after sunset, where he told the men that he wanted help kill Ekram the following day.
Another meeting was also held at the Mizan Moydan later at 11:30pm, where Jihad elaborated the murder plan. As per the plan, Jihad used one of his relatives, whose name could not be disclosed for the sake of ongoing investigation, to send three weapons and bullets in a school bag to Abid on the morning of May 20.
According to Abid’s confession, the men waited for Ekram on the Academy Road from 8:30am while Jihad kept making phone calls to Ward Councillor Shiblu, who split the men into different groups.
One group was given the task of blocking Ekram’s vehicle, another was assigned to launch gun attack while the third one was for attacking the vehicle with sharp weapons.
Around 20 more people also gathered at the scene to apply distraction technique. Jihad updated them about the slain upazila chairman’s changing location which he was constantly being reported by a close associate of Ekram – whose name also could not be disclosed for the sake of ongoing investigation.
Just before the attack, Jihad phoned the attackers saying Ekram had just left the Diabetes Hospital and would reach the entrance of Bilashi Cinema Hall – the scene of the crime – within minutes.
Being alerted by Jihad, the group of attackers got ready to stop Ekram’s vehicle with an auto-rickshaw.
In his confessional statement, Abid also mentioned that Jihad asked Abid and the others to meet him at the Feni Rail Station on the evening of the attack, where Jihad told them that BNP leader Minar Chowdhury had given him Tk1 lakh. Jihad then gave Tk20,000 to the men who left for Dhaka the same night.
Sources said Abid was asked by the court what he had done to assure his own safety after committing the crime to which he answered that he had contacted district Awami League Joint Secretary Jahangir Md Adel and ruling party MP Nizam Uddin Hazari over the phone soon after the incident.
However, no contact was made with them after they arrived in Dhaka, Abid added.
Murder weapons recovered
In other developments in the case, police and RAB forces in Feni yesterday arrested four more people in connection with the killing and recovered weapons assumed to have been used in the murder.
Separate raids in the districts led to the arrests of Mir Hossain Shwapan, Jahidul Islam, Sajib, and Abdur Rauf. A US-made 7.65mm pistol, two bullets and two magazines were recovered from Sajib’s possession, said Feni RAB Camp In-Charge Major Mohiuddin, adding that the weapons were suspected to have been used during the murder.
Shwapan, Jahidul and Sajib are residents of Brinchi area in Feni, while Abdur Rauf is the general secretary of the AL’s Kazaribagh union unit.
They all are known associates of Awami League leader Jahangir Adel and Councillor Shiblu – both are key suspects in the case.
Abul Kalam Azad, inspector of Feni Model police station and investigation officer of the case, said they had recovered four bullets and a US-made 7.65mm pistol used in the attack from a TV box from the office of Jihad.
A special six-member probe team led by Deputy Inspector General of Chittagong Mahbubur Rahman would reach Feni soon to collect more information from the arrestees, Azad added.
A list of 40 suspects has been prepared by the investigators. Rashedul Islam, officer-in-charge of the DB police in Feni, told the Dhaka Tribune that raids were being carried out in different areas of the district to hunt down the accused.
Two key suspects in the case – Adel and local Awami League leader Ziaul Alam Mister – have still remained out of police net.
On May 20, Ekramul Haque, a two-time elected chairman of Fulgazi upazila, was shot and burnt alive by criminals in the Academy area of Feni district town.