Police get 5 days to grill Abrar murder suspects Amit, Toha

Police have been granted five days to grill Chhatra League leader Amit Saha and Hossain Mohammed Toha over the murder of BUET student Abrar Fahad.

Amit, who resides in the dorm where Abrar was fatally beaten, was arrested in the capital’s Sabujbagh area while Toha was picked up from Gazipur’s Mawna on Thursday.

Dhaka Metropolitan Magistrate Md Sarafuzzaman Ansari issued the remand order on Friday after police sought 10 days' custody to question each of them. The judge rejected their pleas for bail in the process.

Amit is a student of civil engineering at BUET and the deputy legal affairs secretary to the university's BCL unit.

He is considered by many as a key suspect but he was not initially named in the case – a subject of much contention over the last two days.

Meanwhile, Toha, a second-year mechanical engineering student and a resident of the Sher-e-Bangla Hall, is the 11th suspect named in the case.

Police had sought 10 days’ custody for each of the suspects after producing them before the court on Friday, said the Detective Branch’s Inspector Md Wahiduzzaman, the investigation officer in the case. 

Abrar, a second-year electrical engineering student, was beaten to death at the university's Sher-e-Bangla Hall on Sept 6 apparently over a Facebook post in which he was critical of a recent deal between India and Bangladesh. His body was later found on the staircase.

The law enforcers have arrested 17 people in connection with the murder of Abrar so far, 13 of whom are accused in the case.

Ifti Mosharrf Sakal, one of the accused in the case and the deputy social welfare secretary to BCL at BUET, made a confessional statement in court over the incident on Thursday.

According to reports in the media, Ifti provided a harrowing account of how Abrar was clobbered with cricket stumps and skipping ropes for hours until his death.