Nearly a year after the sensational six murders in the capital's Gopibagh, investigators have claimed to have found a key lead into the mystery.
A high official of Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP)'s Detective Branch (DB) told the Dhaka Tribune that they had found the involvement of a top leader of the Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT), an Islamist militant group.
“We have analysed some encrypted messages found on ABT's website and blogging site, sent by and received from a secret internet protocol (IP) address. That has led us to Redwanul Azad Rana, operation team leader of ABT, and three of his associates,” the DB official said requesting anonymity.
The official also said Rana, who had been out of the country for a while after the murder, had recently come back and had reportedly been living somewhere in Dhaka.
DB Deputy Commissioner Shaikh Nazmul Alam confirmed the news to the Dhaka Tribune.
He said Rana, along with his associates Nabin, Sayem and Abdullah, staged the sensational Gopibagh killing and had also been planning to kill dozens of bloggers and noted personalities.
On December 21, 2013, six people including Lutfar Rahman Faruq, who called himself a pir or a self-proclaimed Islamic spiritual teacher, his son Sanwar Islam alias Monir, a banker by profession, and followers Mujibur Rahman, Russel, Shahin and Manju were killed in a house at the RK Mission Road in Gopibagh. Police could not immediately identify the killers.
Rana is a former student of the North South University and a chargesheeted accused in the blogger Rajib Hyder murder case. He is responsible for mobilising the organised “sleeper cells” of the militant outfit as per order from the high command.
A sleeper cell is a group of people who remain dormant and unnoticed in a community until activated by prearranged signals, to perform acts of espionage, sabotage and killing on behalf of militant and terrorist groups.
According to another official involved with DB's militancy probe: “Basically, three separate units converge for one particular killing mission. At first, the 'operation wing' make a list of targets by analysing news and blogposts. The 'media wing' then collect information from the field by continuously following the targets. The operation wing then activate and pass on the information to the sleeper cells.”
The official said they had got the information from two suspected militants in their custody – ABT's media wing chief Morshed and his associate Wadud Jumman.
DB's Additional Deputy Commissioner Saiful Islam told the Dhaka Tribune: “ABT operatives mainly target people who publicly comment on religion. In the first phase of a killing mission, ABT members gain the target's confidence and wait for an opportune moment to kill that person.”
DB chief Monirul Islam, a joint commissioner of police, said detectives had remained alert to tap the activities of these tech-savvy members of the various militant outfits.
