Police in Chattogram’s Rauzan have arrested two people over the shooting death of Jubo Dal leader Masudul Haque Chowdhury. They are Md Didar Alam and Abchar Mia. Police say the two arrested men took part directly in the killing. They were arrested on Sunday from the Sitakunda area of the district.
Didar and Abchar are known as followers of a man police describe as the criminal Mohammad Rayhan. Earlier, police had arrested another accused in the case, a man police call the criminal “Dhama” Ilyas.
Chattogram district police superintendent Md Masud Alam announced the two arrests at a news conference at his office on Monday morning. He said Didar and Abchar, armed men who took part directly in the Masud murder case in Rauzan, had been arrested from Sitakunda, and that a foreign-made pistol had been recovered from them. Didar faces 13 cases and Abchar 8, he said. Asked why and on whose orders Masudur Haque was killed, the SP said the matter was under investigation and could not yet be disclosed in the interest of the inquiry.
Masudul Haque Chowdhury was shot dead in the open at Chowmuhani Bazaar in Rauzan’s Pahartali union at about 1:30pm on 13 June. He was senior joint convener of Jubo Dal in the neighbouring Rangunia upazila. His elder brother, Peyarul Haque Chowdhury, is a former chairman of Rangunia’s Betagi union parishad (UP). Family members said Masudul had been preparing to contest the UP chairman’s post in the next election. Police believe he was killed over a dispute about control of a sand quarry on the Karnaphuli river.
Two days after the incident, on 15 June, the victim’s elder brother Peyarul Haque Chowdhury filed a case at Rauzan police station. It named 11 people, including Mohammad Rayhan — described as an associate of Sajjad Ali Khan, a criminal who is a fugitive abroad — and his associates Mohammad Ilyas, Mohammad Mobarak, Didarul Alam and Mohammad Yusuf. Another eight people were named as unidentified accused.
The case statement said that among the accused, Ilyas and Didarul first fired at Masudul Haque, after which Yusuf, Zahed and Abchar ran up and fired several more shots at him. The scene was only a few hundred yards from the office of the assistant superintendent of police for the Rauzan-Rangunia circle. Of the five who took part in the killing, one wore a black mask, while the others’ faces were clearly seen in CCTV footage.
Police said those involved had been identified from CCTV footage; three of them were carrying pistols and two had shotguns.
The SP, Masud Alam, also gave details of three more people arrested on Sunday in connection with two other killing and attempted-killing cases. At the news conference, he said that in the shooting death of a man named Nurul Azim in Hathazari’s Mekhal area on 10 July, the chief planner, Didar Alam, had been arrested from Keraniganj in Dhaka, with a machete and a ramda recovered from him. In addition, in a case over the attempted hacking to death of a man named Nazim under Mirsarai’s Jorarganj police station on 30 July, police had arrested two accused, Md Borhan and Roni, and recovered a foreign-made pistol and nine rounds from them.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report