The home ministry investigation committee has found negligence and failure of the police and the jail authorities behind snatching of convicted JMB leaders on February 23.
“I have received the report and it is nothing but an utter negligence of the authorities concerned,” Home Secretary CQK Mustaq Ahmed told the Dhaka Tribune at his Secretariat office yesterday evening.
The four-member committee headed by Additional Home Secretary Nazimuddin Chowdhury submitted the 52-page report to the home secretary around 6pm.
Mustaq said: “I have not yet gone through the report. But so far I have talked to the committee members; it was negligence, or else, such an incident cannot take place.”
A copy of the report was sent to State Minister for Home Asaduzzaman Khan, he added. Members of banned Islamist outfit JMB (Jama’atul Mujahideen Bangladesh) killed a policeman and snatched three of their top operatives from a prison van in Trishal of Mymensingh on February 23.
Following the incident, the home ministry formed the probe body and gave three working days to submit the report. But the committee took a few more days as it could not prepare the report within the stipulated time, a member of the committee said.
Preferring anonymity, a senior home ministry official who was involved with the investigation said: “We are considering the incident as a failure of the police and the jail authorities.”
“We have interrogated around 40 people including officials of the police and the jail authorities,” the official said adding that the names of suspects had been mentioned in the report.
They could be brought to the book after further investigation, the official said. “There are some weaknesses in the system.”
According to the official, when prisoners are handed over to the police to produce them before a court, the jail authorities do not see the strength of the escort. “We have recommended for improvement of the system,” the official said.
The probe committee has recommended further investigation to find out whether there was any plot behind the incident as it did not rule out the possibility.
Hours after the incident, Rakib Hasan, one of the three JMB operatives, was recaptured from the bordering areas of Shafipur in Tangail. He was killed in a “gunfight” in Beltoil Ceramic area of Mirzapur in Tangail on February 24.
Police also detained three other suspected JMB men in connection with the rare prisoner snatching incident.