The attacks on two publishers in the capital yesterday were carried out in a similar fashion and around the same time, suggest the accounts of police, witnesses and the family of one of the victims.
Both Faisal Arefin Dipan and Ahmedur Rashid Chowdhury were in their offices in Shahbagh and Lalmatia when they came under the attacks around 3:00pm.
Tutul, owner of Shuddhoswar publishing house, was talking to secular writer Ranadipam Basu and Tareq Rahim, a secular blogger and software engineer, inside his office on the fourth floor of a five-storey building.
Besides, Rasel, a staff of the publication house, along with Wasiqul Haque, an employee of online newspaper bdnews24.com, was in the waiting room.
When they heard a knock on the entrance of the office around 3:00pm, Rasel opened the door and saw a boy, aged around 17-18, standing outside, said Deputy Commissioner Biplob Kumar Sarker of Dhaka Metropolitan Police at the spot after the incident.
The boy said he had come from Sylhet and wanted to talk about buying books. He was carrying a diary.
As he entered the room, another boy of the same age followed him inside.
Suddenly, one of them drew out a gun and warned them not to make any noise.
They took them to another room at gunpoint and locked it from outside.
Then the attackers entered Tutul’s room and started stabbing them with machetes. Gun shots were also fired and Tareq received a bullet in his chest. Within a few minutes, they left the place leaving the victims severely injured.
Though the DMP officials described the entry of two youths inside the office, victim Ranadipam told The Daily Star at Dhaka Medical College Hospital that there were three attackers.
Around the same time, Dipan, owner of Jagriti Publications, was hacked to death inside his office at Aziz Cooperative Super Market in Shahbagh.
Dipan’s father Abul Kashem Fazlul Haque, a former professor of Bangla at Dhaka University, said his son left the house of his sister on Fuller Road around 1:30pm and came to the office, located on the second floor of the shopping centre, a hub for alternative writers and publishers.
He called Dipan at 3:30pm over the phone several times, but none answered. Worried, Fazlul Haque went to his office and found the glass door was locked from inside.
He left the place thinking that Dipan might be busy with something important and had kept the door locked to avoid disturbance, something he often did in the past.
The father then went to Dipan’s house at the teachers’ quarters of Sufia Kamal Hall on Dhaka University campus. Dipan’s wife Razia Rahman, senior medical officer at the Dhaka University Medical Centre, then broke the news of the Lalmatia incident to him.
When Fazlul Haque told her of his visit to Dipan’s office, they rushed to Aziz Super Market.
By the time they reached there around 6:00pm, some shop owners had already gathered in front of the office room and were opening the door with a key collected from an employee of the publication house, said Nazmul Ahsan, president of the shop owners’ association of the market.
When Fazlul Haque entered the office, he found his son lying on the floor face down, in a massive pool of blood, in front of the chair he used to sit on and work.
About the Lalmatia incident, DC Biplob Sarker said, “Somebody from the neighbourhood called me around 3:00pm and said something happened and asked me to send police. The police reached there within 5-7 minutes of the call.”
Reaching there, police found the apartment door was locked form outside. “I told them [over the phone] to break into the flat immediately. They found three critically injured men — one lying on the floor and two others sitting on two chairs.”
Since Rasel and Wasiqul were locked inside another room, they didn’t know what was going on.
“They heard footsteps. They heard screams. The whole thing happened within a few minutes,” Biplob said.
Police found an unused bullet and a cartridge from there.
Syed Golam Morshed, who lives in another apartment on the same floor, said three or four families live in the building while the rest were rented out for offices and coaching centres.
While visiting the spot, this correspondent found blood splattered on the floor. There were blood stains on the stairs as well.
Source: The Daily Star
