Police arrest two more suspects in murder of Mitu

Police in Chittagong say they have arrested two more suspects in the murder of their colleague Superintendent Babul Akter’s wife.

The suspects, identified as Ehteshamul Haque Bhola’ and ‘Monir’, have been nabbed from the port city’s Baklia early on Tuesday, said Additional Police Commissioner Devdas Bhattacharya.

He said that they have seized two firearms from the suspects.

“Interrogating Bhola led to the seizure of a revolver, a pistol and six rounds of ammunition from Monir’s home. Bhola had told Monir, his employee, to keep those,” said Bhattacharya.

A police officer, asking not to be named, told that Bhola had supplied the firearms for the killing, but it is yet to be confirmed whether he knew about the plan to murder Babul Aktar’s wife.

On the morning of Jun 5, Mahmuda Akter Mitu was hacked with sharp weapons and shot in the head while she was on her way to drop her son at a bus stop for school.

The latest arrests come after questioning her husband and round-the-clock police deployment at her father’s home.

SP Babul was picked from his on-law’s home after Friday midnight, where he had been staying with his children since the murder and questioned him for almost 15 hours at the Detective Branch office in Dhaka.

Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal, who rejected media reports over Babul being a suspect, had then said that the police officer was called in ‘to cross-check information.’

On Sunday, police claimed arresting two suspects — Motalab Mia Wasim and Anwar Hossain and said that they have ‘confessed’ to their involvement in the murder in statements recorded at a Chittagong court.

Chittagong metro police chief Iqbal Bahar told the media that day that the two were among the six to seven people, who took part in the killing.

He claimed that Wasim was one of the three caught in the CCTV footage fleeing on a motorbike after the murder. “It was Wasim who shot Mahmuda while Anwar did the reconnaissance during the ambush.”

The murder was initially seen as a terrorist act in retaliation for Babul's counter-terrorist operations, while his tenure at the Detective Branch in Chittagong.
But after the arrests of Wasim and Anwar police now maintain that the suspects held are professional criminals, but did not say who hired them.

Police had earlier arrested two other suspects— Abu Nasur Gunnu on Jun 8 and Shah Zaman Robin on Jun 11.

But on Sunday, police said their names would be dropped from the list of suspects in the case.

Source: bdnews24