For one, the body is still to be recovered and the probe has so far hinged on drops of blood found in a duplex flat in the New Town area on the outskirts of Kolkata. And if the body of the MP was skinned and cut into pieces, as the investigators suspect it was, they are still to trace the weapon used in the crime or the body parts. What makes their job tougher is that the prime suspect and the alleged mastermind is a US citizen.
While reconstructing the victim’s last few hours in Kolkata, the investigators have so far found that it was on May 12, around 2.40 pm, that Anar, the MP from Jhenaidah-4 in Khulna district of Bangladesh, arrived in Kolkata through the Gede border checkpoint in Nadia district. He first drove nearly 150 km to Mondolpara lane in Baranagar near Kolkata to meet his friend Gopal Biswas. He had allegedly told his family back home that he was going to Kolkata for a medical check-up.
The next day, May 13, Anar left Biswas’s home, after which he remained incommunicado. The same day, his daughter Mumtarin Ferdoush Dorin filed a complaint with the Sher-e-Bangla Nagar Thana in Dhaka and the police registered a case under sections related to kidnapping. In Kolkata, Anar’s friend Biswas too filed a missing complaint at the Baranagar police station.
On May 15, the West Bengal police acted on a tip-off and reached a flat in New Town, in the Greater Kolkata area, where they found blood stains, after which the investigators of the two countries claimed that the MP had been murdered. Police said the state Criminal Investigation Department (CID), which is probing the case, has sent the blood samples from the flat for DNA profiling, which will be matched with the MP’s daughter.
Speaking from Dhaka, Mahfujur Rahman, Senior Assistant Police Commissioner, Detective Branch (DB), Dhaka Metropolitan Police, and the Investigating Officer (IO) in the case, told The Indian Express, “The MP went inside the flat but didn’t come out. In New Town, Indian cops found blood stains. Circumstantial evidence and investigation by both sides so far confirm that the MP has been murdered.”
The names that have cropped up so far in the case are: Akhtaruzzaman Shaheen, 50, a Bangladesh-origin US citizen who is said to be a childhood friend of the MP and a “business partner” in the “gold trade” they were allegedly involved in; Akhtaruzzaman’s friend and alleged contract killer Amanullah Syed alias Simul Bhuiyan, 56; Amanullah’s assistant Saiful Alam; Tanvir Bhuiyan; Siam alias Saim; and Silasti Rahman, 24, a college student and a friend of the US-based Akhtaruzzaman. Police are also investigating the roles of Faizal and Jihad Hawaldar, 30, both butchers.
While Akhtaruzzaman is allegedly the main conspirator, Amanullah, Tanvir Bhuiyan, Siam and Faizal and Jihad Hawaldar are accused of carrying out the murder. Police say Silasti Rahman, a resident of Tangail in Bangladesh, was not directly involved in the act of the murder, though she has been booked for conspiracy. On reports that Silasti Rahman allegedly honey-trapped the MP, IO Mahfuzur Rahman said, “There is some evidence that points towards that… but it is being verified.”
So far, Amanullah, Saiful Alam, Tanvir Bhuiyan, and Silasti Rahman are in the custody of the Bangladesh Police while Jihad Hawaldar, the Mumbai-based butcher, was arrested by the West Bengal CID on May 24.
According to sources in the CID, days before the murder, Akhtaruzzaman, the alleged conspirator, Amanullah (the alleged contract killer and a murder convict who had served 20 years in a Bangladesh jail), and Silasti Rahman flew down to India on the same flight. They said Amanullah, Tanvir Bhuiyan and Silasti Rahman had been staying in the New Town duplex flat since April 30, allegedly planning the murder.
Police say they have evidence to show that on May 13, MP Anar, Amanullah and the Dhaka-based butcher, Faisal, arrived together at the Sanjeeva Gardens apartments in New Town and took off their shoes before entering the flat. The West Bengal CID say Jihad, the Mumbai-based butcher, allegedly told them that he and Siam were already in the flat when the MP and the others came. Minutes later, the attackers allegedly used chloroform to render the MP unconscious and then smothered him to death.
Harun-or-Rashid, Chief of Detective Branch, Dhaka, who is visiting Kolkata as part of a three-member team of the Dhaka Metropolitan Police, told The Indian Express, “Prima facie, the murder was completed within half an hour of the MP entering the flat.”
Police sources said the investigation has so far revealed he was killed in an open space adjacent to the kitchen. “The CCTV cameras of the house were covered with clothes and thick adhesive tapes. Jihad told us that preparations related to the murder were completed by May 7,” said an officer part of the investigation.
Police sources said Jihad told them that after the MP was murdered, the body was taken to the kitchen, hacked into pieces and put into multiple packets.
“CCTV footage shows that around 4 am on May 13, the assailants picked the MP’s shoes lying outside the flat and put them in a box before leaving. He also said that the weapons used in the murder and to cut the body were disposed of in the Bagjola Canal on Bhangore Road near Krishnamati Bridge on May 14. They also dumped the MP’s phone and his clothes in another canal near Gabtala market. Jihad told us that even the skull was cut into pieces and that they threw one of the pieces in another canal,” said a CID officer.
Dhaka Police also claim that the accused flushed some pieces of the body down in a toilet in the flat. Accordingly, a search was carried out on May 28 in the septic tank of the building and the evidence sent for forensic examination. “The hair and body pieces found in the septic tank have been sent to the Central Forensic Science Laboratory (to confirm if the remains are human). The report is expected to take around a week,” a CID official said, adding that the DNA test will be done after the MP’s daughter gets a visa to enter Kolkata.
Police said that between May 13 and 15, all the accused were seen exiting the duplex flat at different points in New Town where the MP was allegedly killed.
Akhtaruzzaman is believed to have escaped to the US via Dubai from Kathmandu days before the murder, while the others returned to Dhaka. Siam, meanwhile, allegedly fled towards Nepal via Raxaul in Bihar. Police said Siam took the SIM card of the MP’s mobile phone with him and activated it several times on his own phone as a red herring. As a result, the MP’s number was briefly traced to Muzaffarpur.
On Silasti Rahman and her alleged role in the murder, Harun-or-Rashid, the chief of Dhaka’s Detective Branch, said, “The lady is believed to have had no intention (to kill) or might not have been part of the execution but she had knowledge of it.”
Police sources said their investigation has revealed that Silasti Rahman was upstairs at the time of the murder and that when she came down, “she did not see the MP”. She has been booked for conspiracy by Bangladesh police.
Speaking to The Indian Express on phone from Dhaka, Md Abdus Sattar Dulal, Additional Public Prosecutor, said, “So far it is suspected that the murder conspiracy was hatched by Akhtaruzzaman, an old friend and business partner of the victim. We are hopeful that the body parts and weapons will be recovered. Let’s see how the investigation proceeds further.”
On the possible motive, police said they are investigating a gold smuggling racket that the accused and the victim were allegedly part of. A senior police officer said Amanullah revealed that there were disputes over “proceeds of gold smuggling due to which the murder was planned by the US-origin friend of the MP”.
Md Abdus Sattar Dulal, Additional Public Prosecutor from Dhaka told The Indian Express over phone on Tuesday, “The interrogation of the accused will reveal more details. In my long career, I have not seen anything as brutal as this. The investigation is still on.”