Photojournalist remanded in blogger Ananta murder case

A Sylhet court today placed a photojournalist on a seven-day remand in a case filed over the killing of blogger Ananta Bijoy Das.

Metropolitan Magistrate Farhana Yesmin passed the order after Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of Police produced him before the court.

The detainee, Idris Ali, is a photojournalist of a local daily, Sobuj Sylhet, reports our Moulvibazar correspondent quoting CID Inspector Arman Ali, also investigation officer of the case.

“We have adequate evidence that Idris Ali was actively involved in the killing,” Arman said.

Being tipped-off, law enforcers raided Fatehgar village in Sadar upazila last night and detained him, said Gousul Hossain, office-in-charge of Sylhet Biman Bandar Police Station.

The blogger’s brother Ratshawar Das filed a case with the same police station against four unknown men a day after the killing.

On May 12, Ananta got out of his Subid Bazar home around 8:15am. Finding no rickshaw, he walked to Subid Bazar main road, around 250 yards from his house.

All of a sudden, four assailants, all masked and wearing black sunglasses, came from behind and one of them hacked him in the head with a cleaver.

Hit, Ananta started running back towards his house. But the attackers, who had trousers and half-sleeve shirts on them, chased him down and encircled him near a pond known as Dastidardighi.

This time, they hacked him indiscriminately, leaving gaping holes in his head and other parts of the body.

His family took him to Osmani Medical College Hospital in Sylhet where doctors said he was dead already.

Barely a month after Avijit’s murder on the Dhaka University campus, blogger Oyasiqur Rahman was stabbed to death on March 30 in the capital’s Tejgaon in broad daylight.

Religious fanatics have been blamed for both the murders.