Madaripur Sadar police OC Ziaul Morshed on Friday said they would seek a 15-day remand for Golam Faizullah Fahim, the youth caught by locals after the attack.
He told reporters, “Fahim has given us the names of five more persons during preliminary questioning. We’ll present him before court today and seek his remand.”
Morshed suspected Fahim’s involvement with a banned militant outfit.
On Thursday, investigators said they were looking into the 18-year-old suspect’s possible link to Hizb ut-Tahrir, one of the country’s extremist organisations.
Three youths hacked Ripon Chakrabarty, a Hindu mathematics teacher at Madaripur’s Government Nazimuddin College, with sharp weapons in an attempt to kill him on Wednesday afternoon.
The assailants first knocked on the door of the teacher’s home near the college’s main gate. As soon as he opened the door, they attacked him and tried to chop his head off, causing injuries, police said.
The modus operandi was strikingly similar to earlier attacks that killed secular writers and bloggers, online activists, publishers and members of different religious minority communities across Bangladesh over the past two years.
Fahim was caught by the locals who had rushed to Ripon’s help hearing his cries.
The injured teacher was first taken to Madaripur Sadar Hospital and then transferred to Barisal’s Sher-e-Bangla Medical College Hospital.
Sub-Inspector (SI) Ayub Ali filed the case in connection with the attack on Thursday night at Madaripur Sadar Police Station.
SI Barek Karim Hawlader of the same station was made the case investigation officer.
The six main accused named in the case are Fhaim, Salman Taskin, Shahriar Hasan, ‘Zahin’, ‘Rayhan’ and ‘Mejbah’.
Several unknown persons have also been accused in the case.
Police believe the accused planned was to spread militancy in the country’s southern region by first striking in Madaripur, OC Ziaul Morshed said.
Golam Faizullah Fahim was a student of the Uttara High School and College in Dhaka. He sat the HSC exams this year but disappeared without taking the chemistry test.
He went off the grid after leaving his home on Jun 11 morning, prompting his father, Golam Faruk, to file a General Diary (GD) at the capital’s Dakkhinkhan Police Station.
In the GD, Faruk mentioned receiving a text from Fahim the next day, saying: “I’m going abroad, as there is no other way. I will see you again if I’m alive”.
The family subsequently learnt of his arrest in Madaripur.
Meanwhile, Madaripur Detective Branch officials, led by Inspector Kamrul Hasan, went to Sher-e-Bangla Medical College Hospital and took Ripon Chakrabarty’s statement. They also spoke to his family.
Hasan later told reporters that they hoped their investigation will soon produce results. However, he declined to give details ‘for the sake of the probe’.
But a DB official, seeking anonymity, told bdnews24.com that they already had information about Fahim’s link with Hizb ut-Tahrir.
“A senior in his college brought him (Fahim) to this path. They used to frequently meet in a library near the college in Dhaka. Fahim came to Madaripur on the day of the attack and had started following Ripon Chakrabarty,” the official said.
Investigators suspect that the attack on Ripon was an attempted ‘target killing’, as the Hindu teacher had no enemies and the methods employed resembled those used in previous such attacks.