Elite force Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) is now in an embarrassing situation as it has apparently failed, like the Detective Branch of police, to resolve the mysterious killings of journalist couple Sagar Sarowar and Meherun Runi took place two years back.
According to sources, the crime busters intend to admit its failure but the officials are not ready to face the embarrassing situation.
The investigators of RAB could not even identify any of the suspects or recover the mobile phone, laptop and iPod missing from the house of the couple during the murders.
They even do not have contact with the victims’ families.
Under this circumstance, the families of both Sagar and Runi expressed frustrations as well as anger because of the constant failure of the government’s investigating agencies in resolving the sensational case.
It is the only case in which a law enforcement or investigating agency surrendered before the court admitting failure to unearth the mystery.
The journalist couple was found dead at their rented house in the capital’s West Rajabazar in the morning of February 11, 2012.
Following the murder, Sher-e-Bangla Nagar police started investigation in a case filed over the incident. Later the case was shifted to the DB, but the court in an order shifted the case to RAB for investigation as the DB had expressed its inability.
Talking to the Dhaka Tribune, neither the state minister for home nor any RAB high officials could say about the reasons why there was no development in the investigation though two years have passed since the brutal murders.
State Minister for Home Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal on Sunday night told the Dhaka Tribune: “We only come to know what the investigators tell us. Only they will be able to say about the real causes of their failures or delay.”
He claimed that the RAB personnel were trying to find out the motive of the killings.
Talking to the Dhaka Tribune, Wing Commander ATM Habibur Rahman, director of legal and media wing of RAB, said: “The time is yet to come to admit the failure of unfolding the mystery. We are still hopeful and trying our best.”
On the day of the killings, former home minister Shahara Khatun vowed to arrest the killers within 48 hours. A week later, police chief Hassan Mahmood Khandker declared that there had been “significant progress was in the investigation.”
Meanwhile, after the case had been shifted to RAB, the elite force arrested a total of eight persons including five suspects in the killing of Dr Nitai Chandra Dutta. Three other detainees include two security guards of the house where the couple was killed while the other was a friend of Runi.
But, the arrest of those people ultimately went in vein as DNA tests did not prove their involvement in the killings.
Nawsher Roman, a brother of Runi and also the plaintiff of the case, said: “RAB did nothing but staging dramas centring DNA tests and arresting some worthless people.”
He also alleged that the RAB personnel had not informed them anything about the progress in investigation.
Saleha Monir, an enraged mother of Sagar, said: “If the law enforcers want to show the involvement of any thieves in the murder, I will not accept it.”
