Police arrest 2 of the 3 ex-RAB officers

A day after the military greenlight, police officials investigating the Narayanganj multiple murders have arrested two of the three disgraced RAB officers from Dhaka Cantonment for their suspected ties.

They are former Lt Col Tarek Sayeed Mohammad, who was the Narayanganj-based RAB-11 Commanding Officer, and former Maj Arif Hossain of the army, Narayanganj’s Superintendent of Police Khandker Mohid Uddin said.

Minutes past 4am Saturday, he told bdnews24.com they did not find former Lt Commander MM Rana of the navy.

“But we are taking the other two after arresting them.”

Mohammad is the son-in-law to Disaster Management and Relief Minister Mofazzal Hossain Chowdhury Maya.

File Photo

A little before 4am, two police officials told bdnews24.com the arrestees were kept at Cantonment Police Station. They were to be taken to Narayanganj once the formalites were over.

Speaking to bdnews24.com, SP Mohid Uddin around 2:30am Saturday evaded a direct answer when asked whether they were going to arrest the trio soon. “We are working on it. Stay awake, you might get the news.”

Cantonment police assisted their Narayanganj counterparts in making the arrests as they were notified earlier in the day.

Seven men, including Narayanganj City’s Ward-2 Councillor Nazrul Islam, who was also the panel mayor, and senior lawyer Chandan Kumar Sarkar, were abducted on Apr 27.

Their dead bodies were fished out from the Shitalakhyya River over two days - Apr 31 and May 1 -- a development that outraged the nation.

Two days after the seven were abducted, three officers of RAB-11 in the district were removed from their posts and sent back to their parent forces - two to the army and the third to navy.

The trio was retired after dead bodies of the seven were discovered.

The action had also followed Nazrul’s father-in-law Shahidul Islam’s charges that some RAB officials were bribed to carry out the murders.

In the backdrop of these events, the High Court on May 11 in an order asked the inspector general of police to arrest them.

But their arrests were delayed by five days due to apparent procedural complications between police and the army, though there were no legal barriers.

However, their arrests came only after the Armed Forces Division on Thursday cleared the police to arrest them.