Plot to kill Joy: Police press charges against five including Shafik Rehman, Mahmudur Rahman

Police have filed charges against journalists Shafik Rehman, Mahmudur Rahman and three others over an alleged plot to abduct and kill Sajeeb Wazed Joy, son of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

Court Correspondentbdnews24.com
Published : 23 Feb 2018, 05:57 AM
Updated : 23 Feb 2018, 06:38 AM

Hasan Arafat, senior assistant commissioner of the Detective Branch of police, submitted the chargesheet to the chief metropolitan magistrate’s court on Tuesday.

“The documents were kept at the special room of the magistrate for observation. Police received them on Thursday,” said Sub-Inspector Jalal, registration officer of court police.

The judge is due to sign the chargesheet on Mar 6, he said.

The five accused are Shafik Rehman, former editor of weekly magazine Jai Jai Din, Mahmudur Rahman, acting editor of Bangla daily Amar Desh, Mohammad Ullah Mamun, vice-president of Jatiyatabadi Samajik Sangskritik Sangstha, a pro-BNP organisation, his son Rizve Ahmed Caesar, and Mizanur Rahman Bhuiyan, an businessman living in the United States.

Mamun and Mizanur have been shown as fugitives in the chargesheet.

Shafik and Mahmudur were the key conspirators in the abduction plot, SI Jalal said citing the chargesheet.

Mohammad Ullah Mamun aided the conspiracy. A former vice-president of the US unit of the BNP, Mamun now lives in Connecticut.

Police have accused Mizanur Rahman of funding the crime and working as an adviser.

Mamun’s son Rizve collected personal information on Joy from the US intelligence agency FBI and provided them to the other suspects, according to the chargesheet.

Similar accounts are mentioned in a New Court document that handed a three-year jail term to Rizve in 2015 after founding him guilty of bribing an FBI official to obtain classified information.

As per the court document, he handed the information to a Bangladeshi journalist in return for $30,000.

The matter had triggered discussions in Bangladesh parliament. Joy, who lives in Virginia with his family, accused BNP leaders of conspiring to ‘abduct and kill him’ in a Facebook post in March that year.

Bangladesh police started the case at Paltan Police Station in August 2015 over the “plot to abduct Joy”.

According to the case, Mamun and other top brass leaders of BNP and its allies united in Jasas office in Dhaka’s Paltan, New York, different areas in UK and some Bangladeshi neighbourhoods before September 2011 to chalk out a plan to murder Joy after abducting him.

Shafik Rehman was shown arrested in the case in April 2016. The journalist, known for his pro-BNP stance, was taken on remand twice that year.

Police found classified information and documents on Joy after raiding his home in Dhaka’s Iskaton, the DB had said.

Shafik collected the data for writing an investigative report, his wife Taleya Rehman claimed.

Shafik secured bail from the Supreme Court after spending five months in jail.

Mahmudur Rahman, a former adviser to BNP chief Khaleda Zia, got arrested in a sedition case in 2013 from his office in Karwan Bazar in Dhaka. Police showed the inmate arrested in the ‘plot to abduct Joy’ case in 2016.

 “Mahmudur Rahman collected information like, the places he (Joy) visits, his work station, his family members etc from Miltan (Caesar’s friend Mizanur Rahman Bhuiyan). Such information are enough to plot an abduction,” DMP Additional Commissioner Monirul Islam had said then.

Caesar used his friend Mizanur Rahman Bhuiyan to pass on the information to Mahmudur.

Mahmudur secured bail in November 2016 after spending three years behind bars.