Another BCL man nabbed

Emdadul Haque
Staff Correspondent

Detectives nabbed yesterday another Bangladesh Chhatra League cadre, Emdadul Haque, identified as one of the killers of Bishwajit.

This raised to 11 the number of arrestees in the gruesome murder in the capital during the December 9 opposition-enforced blockade.

Emdadul was held from a rest house in Chapainawabganj Sadar upazila around 1:30am when he was preparing to flee to India and was brought to the capital, Deputy Commissioner of Dhaka Metropolitan Police Monirul Islam told journalists yesterday afternoon.

During primary interrogation by a team of the Detective Branch of Police, Emdadul admitted his involvement with the BCL and said he had hit Bishwajit with an iron rod ruthlessly and repeatedly in a bid to please top BCL leaders and thus bag a job with their backing, sources in the probe team team told The Daily Star.

Investigators said they identified Emdadul on the basis of photographs and videos of the incident published in the media and efforts are on to nab the others involved.

He was produced in a metropolitan magistrate’s court yesterday and was remanded for seven days.

Three others of the 11 arrestees now on DB remand confessed to a magistrate on Sunday that they are BCL activists and were actively involved in the December 9 murder. The three are Rafiqul Islam Shakil, Mahfuzur Rahman Nahid and Rasheduzzaman Shaon.

Meanwhile, The Daily Star had earlier run reports identifying seven of the killers and all of them are now on DB remand from different dates.

Bishwajit, a 24-year-old tailor, was brutally killed by BCL activists, who took him for a pro-blockade picket involved in a cocktail blast near Bahdurshah Park in Old Dhaka during the blockade.

According to records, Emdadul obtained master’s degree in philosophy from Jagannath University. But on December 12, the JnU authorities cancelled his degree for his alleged involvement in the killing.

Emdadul told investigators that he and his accomplices wanted to use the cocktail blast as a chance to please the leaders of JnU unit of BCL who had asked them to give a lesson to those who exploded it.

He also said he is from a poor family in Jessore and wanted to manage a job by impressing BCL top leaders with his loyalty to them, according to police sources.

Source: The Daily Star