Three more suspects arrested over murder of blogger Niloy

Police have arrested three more people in connection with the murder of secular blogger Niladri Chatterjee Niloy.

Additional Deputy Commissioner SM Jahangir Alam of Dhaka Metropolitan Police on Wednesday said one of the suspects had been held for threatening Niloy on Facebook.

And the other two were nabbed for ‘admitting responsibility’ on the internet for the murder, he added.

The three were identified as Mufti Maulana Abdul Gaffar and Islami Chhatra Shibir leaders Mortuza Sabbir Faisal and Tariqul Islam.

Shibir is the student wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami, an ally of the BNP in the 20-party alliance.

DMP spokesperson Monirul Islam told reporters that Gaffar had been taken into custody from Narayanganj’s Sonargaon on Tuesday.

He said Gaffar had threatened to kill Niloy on Facebook from a profile opened under a fake name.

Faisal and Islam had opened another Facebook profile under the name of ‘Ansar Al Islam’ and claimed credit for the murder, said Joint Commissioner Islam.

He said the two were leaders of Shibir’s Sitakunda unit in Chittagong. Both were arrested on Tuesday in Narayanganj and Sitakunda, respectively.

Legal measures against the three were being taken, said the police official.

Earlier, police had arrested two others, Kauser Hossain and Kamal Hossain, and interrogated them in two phases over the murder.

Niloy, a 27-year-old NGO worker who used to blog against communalism and radicalism, was hacked to death in his home in Gorhan on Aug 7.

His widow Ashamoni had filed a case with Khilgaon police against four unnamed people after the crime.

The Detective Branch of DMP were later asked to investigate the murder.

A statement claiming responsibility for killing Niloy was issued in the name of the subcontinent branch of al-Qaeda.

Similar claims of responsibility had been made after the murders of secular writers and bloggers Avijit Roy, Oyasiqur Rahman Babu and Ananta Bijoy Das.​​