Arrest Narayanganj killers: Hasina tells Kamal

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has summoned State Minister for Home and ordered him to arrest those involved in the abduction and murder of six people in Narayanganj.

She summoned Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal at her official Ganabhaban residence on Wednesday night hours after six bodies were found floating in the Shitalakhya River in Narayanganj between the afternoon and evening of Wednesday.

Narayanganj City Councillor Nazrul Islam and senior lawyer Chandan Kumar Sarkar were among the six bodies.

Emerging from the meeting, Kamal told reporters, “The prime minister is very much strict in this matter. Those involved in the abduction and killings will be hunted down.”

He, however, said the abduction and killings of seven people in one go would not erode the government’s popularity.

He told bdnews24.com this was not a politically motivated murder.

“As far as I have learned, personal conflict, land grabbing, grabbing of houses and personal vendetta were behind these murders. There is no political issue here,” he said.

The minister said the victims’ families had given this information.

Nazrul, Councillor of Narayanganj City Corporation and Awami League supporter, was abducted from the city’s Adalatparha along with four of his aides by miscreants posing as the members of the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) on Sunday.

Nazrul was returning home after attending a court case, police said quoting his family.

Police found their car abandoned at Gazipur’s Rajendrapur around 9pm.

Members of Chandan’s family believe the lawyer and his driver Ibrahim were also abducted because they had witnessed Nazrul’s abduction.

Police retrieved six floating bodies from the Shitalakhya River at Bandar Upazila in efforts stretching from afternoon to 6pm on Wednesday.

The whereabouts of Nazrul’s car driver ‘Jahangir’ is not yet known.

Nazrul’s wife, Selina Islam Beauty, alleged that the ruling Awami League’s Siddhirganj thana unit Vice President Nur Hossain and General Secretary Hazi Mohammad Yasin had planned the crime.

Hossain is also the councillor of the Ward No. 4 of Narayanganj City Corporation.

Nazrul’s family filed a case against Hossain, Yasin and a few others on Monday.

Junior home minister Kamal told bdnews24.com: “Those who have been named in the case will be arrested.”

Nur Hossain, however, has refuted the allegations made by Nazrul’s wife.

“I’m not involved in the incident,” he had told bdnews24.com.

Citing the police investigation into the incident, Kamal said, “It wasn’t carried out for political reasons. As far as I have gathered, it (killings) was committed because of personal and land-related disputes.”