Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) has made three arrests in its investigation into the slaying of ward-level Awami League leader Jahangir Alam in the capital 17 days ago.
The arrestees, Amena Khatun, 27, Md Jannatul Nayeem, 22, and Md Yasin Sarker Rajan, 34, were picked up along with two passports and currency.
The elite force investigation indicated that Jahangir was the victim of a contract killing.
Jahangir Alam, 45, a presidential candidate of the Ward 41 unit of the AL, was shot dead in front of his West Agargaon house on August 9 while getting out of his car. His wife and daughter were with him in the car.
He was the president of the Agargaon Momota Bahumukhi Samabaya Samity.
Nayeem, one of the arrestees, was identified as the shooter, said Mufti Mahmud Khan, director of the RAB legal and media wing.
The RAB officials said Jahangir was shot in the chest by two youths wearing three-quarter pants, who then fled the scene. Jahangir died at the National Institute of Traumatology and Orthopaedic Rehabilitation, popularly known as Pongu Hospital, in the capital around midnight.
“Acting on a tip-off, we arrested Amena from Nabinagar bus stand on Monday. The main shooter, Nayeem, was arrested from the capital’s Adabor neighbourhood while Rajan, the owner of the murder weapon, was arrested in West Agargaon,” he said.
The primary interrogation revealed that the plan to kill Jahangir had been made last Ramadan. The day before Eid, Jasim asked Mohabbat and Nayeem to come to Hossain Ali’s house, located close to the victim’s house. Jasim had the weapon delivered to Hossain Ali’s house by Rajan, and Hossain then handed it over to Nayeem.
On August 9, Nayeem accompanied by cohorts, shot Jahangir six times as he was getting out of his vehicle around 10:55pm. He then handed the weapon over to Jasim, Haji Babu and Rajan who were waiting near the scene of the crime, RAB sources said.
“We are trying to arrest Mohabbat who was with Nayeem during the shooting,” the RAB official said.
According to the RAB investigation, Jahangir is the son-in-law of Awami League Ward 41 unit president Nur Mohammad. Nur Mohammad is the main accused in the murder case of ward-level AL leader Fazlul Haque. Nur went missing in October, following Fazlul’s murder in January 2011. After two months without a trace, another of his sons-in-law, Abdul Mannan, also went missing.
Nur’s family alleges that law enforcers have Nur and Mannan in custody. Nur’s son Mamun was also murdered that year while another son, Bagha, died of natural causes.
Yet another of his sons, Mintu, absconded to India because he was listed as a criminal here. Mintu is accused in a number of murder cases.
Jahangir, the victim, started to manage his father-in-laws assets after his father-in-law, Nur Mohammad, and brother-in-law, Mannan, disappeared, and other brother-in-law, Mintu fled to India, the investigators said.
RAB alleges that Mintu, who is absconding, disliked his brother-in-law’s control over his father’s assets and hatched a plan to have him killed.
They allege that Mintu hired contract killers to murder his brother-in-law.
