Mayor Gafur was killed over transaction of Tk 3 mn, police say

Police have said Nouhata municipality Mayor Abdul Gafur was killed over transaction of Tk 2 or 3 millions.

Investigation officer in Gafur murder case Abul Kalam Azad said Jannatul Salma Mim, arrested over the killing, had taken Tk 2 or 3 million from the mayor, offering him 50 percent stake in a clinic she was setting up at Naogaon.

He suspects Gafur, also a leader of ruling Awami League in Rajshahi’s Paba Upazila, was murdered over the money.

Police are interrogating Mim, who identified herself as the wife of the mayor.

Law enforcers arrested her by tracking mobile-phone calls. 

Gafur’s body was exhumed from Azimpur graveyard in Dhaka on Tuesday, two months after he was killed. 
An autopsy was done on it at Dhaka Medical College Hospital on Thursday.

Azad, inspector at Paba Police Station, said Mim had taken ‘a handsome amount of money’ from the mayor for setting up Salma Clinic and Diagnostic Centre in Naogaon town.

“However, she is sometime mentioning the figure as Tk 3 million and sometime as 2 million,” he added.

Azad said the two had also entered into an agreement over the deal.

He said Gafur was pressing Mim to pay back the money and at one stage she asked the mayor to come to Dhaka to take it.

The police officer said: “Gafur was taken to Mim’s rented house at Road 2 in Mohammadpur, as per a plan, in the morning of Jan 1, when he arrived in Dhaka by a train.

“Mim and her husband Harun-or-Rashid kept the mayor confined to their house for two days without food. “At one stage, Mim and Harun killed Gafur stifling him with pillows.”