Little progress in one month’s investigation

It was around 8:45am of July 7, the Eid day. With police checkpoints set up all around the Sholakia Eidgah in Kishoreganj, people had already started to gather to offer Eid prayers.   

But suddenly, some seven to eight youths -- all in Panjabi and in their 20s -- attacked policemen with sharp weapons, guns and bombs at a checkpoint near Azim Uddin High School. Police retaliated immediately by shooting back.

Tap here to add The Daily Star as a trusted source

The incident left four people, including two police constables, an attacker, and a local woman, dead.

Bullet-hit Shafiul Islam, one of the attackers, was caught from the scene and admitted to the Mymensingh Medical College Hospital under Rab custody.

After his release from the hospital on this Thursday, he was being taken to Kishoreganj to be handed over to the police there. However, his associates tried to snatch away him from the Rab in Nandail area, leading to a “gunfight”, according to the elite force.

This Shafiul and another “militant” were killed in the incident.

Talking to The Daily Star yesterday, an official from the Kishoreganj Sadar Police Station said the death of Shafiul, the main accused in the case, would “seriously hamper the investigation”.

Asked, Officer-in-charge of the same police station, Morshed Zaman, also the investigation officer of the case, however, did not give any direct answer.

“All of those who carried out the Gulshan attack were killed. Would it hamper the investigation? What do you think?” he told this correspondent.

He also said as per of investigation, they were scrutinising all the evidence. “This is how investigation works,” he said.

Morshed also said a petition has recently been filed with a Kishoreganj court to show Anowar Hossain, who allegedly rented out his house in Gaibandha to Shafiul, arrested in the Sholakia case.

Anowar, 48, headmaster of the Ebtedia section of Khalshi Dakhil Madrasha in Gobindagnaj upazila of Gaibandha, was arrested on July 22.

Shafiul told the Rab that he had been staying at Anowar's house since March with a monthly rent of Tk 1,000, said its officials.

 Another accused in the case, Jahidul Haque Tanim, 24, of Pashim Tarapasha village in Kishoreganj Sadar upazila, is in jail.

Five more people, who were arrested in connection with the attack, are also behind bars. They, however, were not made accused in the case.

On July 1, a group of terrorists stormed into an upscale eatery, Holey Artisan Bakery, in Gulshan diplomatic zone in the capital, killing 20 hostages, most of whom were foreigners. Two police officials were also killed.

VICTIM FAMILIES REEL FROM SHOCK

Jharna Rani Bhowmik is a local who died after a stray bullet from the gunfight between the law enforcers and the attackers came through her window and hit her on that fateful morning of July 7.

Her husband Gourango Nath Bhowmik, who works at a private firm, said, “Her death has devastated our entire family. She used to run the family singlehandedly.”

Every night, their 12-year-old son Shuvodev Bhowmik sleeps keeping his mother's photographs next to his head.

 Mohammad Shamim, brother-in-law of Jahirul Haque Tapu, one of the two police constables killed in the attack, said Jahirul was the lone breadwinner in his family.

The entire family is in trouble now, he told this paper over the phone.

SHAFIUL'S BODY HANDED OVER TO FAMILY

Police handed over the body of Shafiul to his family members yesterday after they reached Mymensingh from their home in Devipur Uttarpara area of Ghoraghat upazila of Dinajpur, said Ataur Rahman, officer-in-charge of Nandail Police Station.

Receiving the body at Mymensingh Medical College morgue, Shafiul's mother demanded that those who misguide youths and turn them into militants be arrested and published.

“Being a mother, I do not want any other mother to loss her child this way,” said Nargis Sultana Sheuly.

 “No mother wants her child to turn into a militant.

Meanwhile, the Rab filed three cases, including a murder case, with Nandail Police Station on Friday over the “shootout” in which Shafiul was killed. All the accused in the cases are unidentified people, police said.