A demand for 10 lakh taka in extortion was made to a businessman over WhatsApp from a foreign number, with a threat to kill him if he did not pay. The businessman was the lessee of a sacrificial-animal market in South Kamalapur. Four days after he refused to pay, gunmen opened fire at his office. A police investigation into the incident pointed to Tanim Reza, alias Bappi, a criminal from the capital’s Motijheel area, police said.
Police say Tanim Reza has long been a name in the underworld in the Motijheel, Arambagh and Kamalapur areas. Although his affiliations and identity changed with political shifts, his pattern of crime did not. He is accused of extending control over tender-fixing, transport, footpaths, waste, internet and cable businesses. Mohammad Harun Or Rashid, deputy commissioner of the DMP’s Motijheel division, told Prothom Alo that Tanim Reza’s name had come up in various incidents of shootings, extortion and working for top criminals in Motijheel, Maghbazar, Malibagh and Kamalapur, and that information had been found of his contact with top criminals.
Police allege that when anyone refused to pay extortion, Tanim Reza used his own “shooter squad” to open fire in public to intimidate them, with an armed group of seven to nine people always with him; he himself also carried a weapon. During the now-banned Awami League government, he is alleged to have worked on tender control for influential Jubo League leaders — intimidating contractors with weapons, collecting extortion and forcing rivals out of tenders. After the fall of the Awami League government on 5 August 2024, police say, Tanim grew close to the brother of a senior BNP leader and began presenting himself as a Jubo Dal leader, using that identity to try to re-establish dominance in Motijheel, Arambagh and Kamalapur.
According to investigators, from then on he regularly collected extortion from bus counters, footpaths and various businesses, and is accused of taking regular payments from the Brahmanbaria Express bus counter in Kamalapur and of seizing a share of Royal Coach transport on the Dhaka-Cumilla route. He is also accused of threatening several BNP leaders and workers of the Motijheel thana unit.
Police say Tanim Reza entered the underworld in the Motijheel area in 2002 as an associate of Jisan Ahmed, a top criminal on the home ministry’s list who is now a fugitive in Dubai, and worked on tender control alongside Khaled Mahmud Bhuiyan, an expelled organising secretary of the Dhaka south city Jubo League. Officials say Tanim’s armed activity helped public-works contractor and expelled Jubo League leader GK Shamim and Khaled Mahmud Bhuiyan keep tender control for a long time. Police say they still have evidence of Tanim’s contact with Jisan and another fugitive, Molla Masud.
DMP officials say Tanim Reza faces seven earlier cases of extortion, robbery, abduction, attempted murder, abuse of women and children, and drugs, filed at the Rampura, Hatirjheel, Khilgaon, Shyampur and Demra police stations between 2016 and 2026. His name had also come up, alongside those of top criminals Ikhtiar and Jisan, in the 2003 killing of detective inspector Nurul Alam Sikder and sub-inspector Alamgir Hossain during a raid on the Sunrise residential hotel in Malibagh, police said.
Police say the 10-lakh-taka demand was made on 15 May over WhatsApp from a foreign number to Ismail Hossain, the lessee of the South Kamalapur sacrificial-animal market. When the money was not paid, a group of gunmen opened fire at his firm, “AI Cargo Service,” on 19 May. A case was filed at Motijheel police station, and the investigation found the involvement of Tanim Reza and his associates. At a news conference on 18 July, DMP additional commissioner (crime and operations) Mohammad Osman Gani said Tanim and his associates had gone into hiding after the incident, and that after nearly two months of effort Tanim Reza was arrested near the Purbani Hotel area on the morning of 17 July, followed by four associates — Rakibul Islam Bhuiyan, alias Rijon, 35, Mohammad Juwel, 48, Shakil, 27, and Manik Kazi, 50.
Police say a raid on a flat in Eastern Kamalapur Housing recovered three foreign firearms, ammunition, an electric shock gun and an axe. In Ismail Hossain’s case, police have been granted a seven-day remand of Tanim and Rakibul to identify the planners behind the incident, fugitive associates, the source of the weapons used and other members of the extortion ring. After the arms were recovered, police filed another case against Tanim and Rakibul under the Arms Act at Motijheel police station.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report