Amar Desh’s Mahmudur Rahman also faces charges for conspiring to kill PM’s son Joy: Police

The Daily Amar Desh Acting Editor Mahmudur Rahman will also be shown arrested in a police case over a plot to kidnap and murder Sajeeb Ahmed Wazed Joy.

Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Monirul Islam, who heads Dhaka Metropolitan Police’s Counter-Terrorism and Transnational Crime (CTTC), was speaking to bdnews24.com on Sunday.

The day before, another pro-BNP journalist, Shafik Rehman was arrested in the same case over the conspiracy to kill Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s son.

Monirul Islam said Mahmudur Rahman was among those who had received confidential reports acquired by a BNP leader’s son, who had bribed an FBI agent to access confidential files on Joy.

Rizve Ahmed Caesar, son of the BNP’s US unit leader Mohammad Ullah Mamun, who was jailed in March last year after pleading guilty to the bribe charges, had shared the information with a journalist in Bangladesh in exchange of $30,000, according to court documents.

After arresting Shafik Rehman at Dhaka’s Eskaton on Saturday, police said he contacted ‘the conspirators’ during a visit to the US in 2013.

“Detectives have evidence that links him directly with this incident,” DIG Islam told bdnews24.com.

There are others who will also be implicated in the case filed with Paltan police, he said. “Mahmudur Rahman who is behind bars will be shown arrested.”

A former advisor to BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia, Mahmudur Rahman came to head the daily after buying its ownership. The engineer, accused of a slew of charges including sedition, has been in prison since 2013.

Police had sealed the newspaper’s press just hours after his arrest in April that year.

Detectives say Caesar had his friend Milton Bhuiyan take the stolen information to Dhaka in August 2013.

“Milton gave Mahmudur Rahman primary information on an individual’s (Joy) whereabouts, his workplace and also where his family members were located. It was adequate to plan an abduction.”

Detective Branch Assistant Commissioner Hasan Arafat, the case’s investigation officer, and its supervising officer Mashrukur Rahman Khaled will go to the US, said Islam.

Police will also try to bring the case’s prime accused BNP leader Mamun, a leader from the BNP’s cultural wing JaSaS, who is currently living in Fairfield County in the state of Connecticut.