Rab waits on DNA test results for months
When it takes merely a week to match DNA profiles, the authorities dealing with the sensational Sagar-Runi murder case are taking months to do the job.
The Rapid Action Battalion, which is investigating the case, has sent DNA samples of over 15 suspects between November last year and March this year to two US laboratories to match them with the DNA samples collected from the crime scene.
To this day, the elite force claims that it has not received any results and that it is waiting on them.
DNA samples of seven people were found from the victims’ bodies and their clothes until January. One of these samples was taken from Runi’s T-shirt.
It may take up to a few months to prepare a DNA profile from a sample. However, once a profile is prepared, it should not take more than a week to match it with the profile of a suspected killer, said a DNA scientist, requesting anonymity.
For example, the matching of DNA profiles of as many as 321 bodies from the Rana Plaza building collapse, with 550 relatives claiming the bodies, was due in six months, said Prof Sharif Akhteruzzaman, chief of National Forensic DNA Profiling Laboratory in the capital.
Asked about the reason for the unusual delay in matching the DNA profiles, Lt Col Ziaul Hasan, Rab’s intelligence wing director, could not give any clear answer.
He said, without elaborating, “The investigators have contacted the laboratories in the USA, but they could not get any satisfactory explanation for the delay.”
Commander Habibur Rahman, director of Rab’s legal and media wing, said, “The interrogation of the eight people arrested in connection with the case produced nothing ‘credible’.”
“However, investigation is going on as we wait for the DNA matching reports from two US laboratories.”
He added that the motive behind the murder still remained unclear.
In two phases, one in June and another in July last year, Rab sent to the laboratories some evidence — including two knives, the victims’ bloodstained clothes and hair — for forensic testing and DNA profiling.
Sagar Sarowar, news editor of Maasranga television, and Meherun Runi, a senior reporter at ATN Bangla, were killed in their flat in the capital’s West Rajabazar in the small hours of February 11 last year.
The Detective Branch of police was initially overseeing the murder case, which was later transferred to Rab on April 18, 2012, after the parliamentary committee expressed frustration over the branch’s failure in identifying the killer(s).
In the murder case, the elite force had shown arrested six alleged killers of Narayan Chandra Nitai, a physician who was killed in his residence in the capital on August 23 that year.
Because Nitai was killed in a similar fashion, Rab thinks it is possible that the six are also involved in the killing of the journalist couple.
The force also detained Tanvir Rahman, a schoolteacher and a friend of Runi’s.
Rab on February 9 arrested Humayun Kabir alias Enamul, the “prime” suspect in the case, as he was the fugitive security guard of the building where the journalist couple were killed.
Source: The Daily Star
It was almost a foregone conclusion that Sagar-Runi murder case will remain a mystery forever because the quarter involved in it is ‘untouchable’ under the present govt. Maybe the ex-HM did not have the inkling how big fishes were playing under the current and therefore she ‘innocently’ declared to nab the culprits within 48 hours. She was destined to fail. Now the present HM also staged a number of crude dramas about that. But common people have understood that nothing is going to happen to the murderers who were reported to have been assigned to ‘accomplish the task’ of eliminating the two journos who showed the audacity to unravel the truth. We are now watching what happens to even the ruling party MPs if anyone of them dares to cross the line marked by the supremo of the ruling party. So be careful and wait till Gods hand intervenes.