14 years on the run in guise of imam

The death row convict in Ramna Batamul bombing case mufti Shafiqur Rahman was hiding for 14 years in the guise of an imam at a mosque in Narsingdi for Tk 5,000 per month.

The Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) on Thursday arrested him while conducting a drive at Bhairab in Kishoreganj.

The elite force legal and media wing commander Khandaker Al Moin on Friday said in a press briefing that Shafiqur was one of the planners of bombings at Ramna Batamul on 14 April in 2001, which claimed 10 lives.

Apart from this, he was involved in the grenade attack carried out on 21 August in 2004, and the killing of former finance minister Shah AMS Kibria in 2005. Shafiqur Rahman was attached with the militant outfit till 2008 and then went into hiding in 2008, taking a job as imam at a mosque in Narsingdi, Khandaker Al Moin added.

According to the RAB info, Shafiqur, from Bhairab in Kishorganj, passed the Hedaya in 1983 from a madrasa at Chawkbazar in Dhaka. Then he completed his Dawra-e-Hadith from Darul Uloom Deoband madrasa in India in 1986. He enrolled in the Fatwa department at Yusuf Bin Noori madrasa at Karachi in Pakistan and fought for Taliban in Afghanistan in 1989. At the end of that year, Shafiqur returned to the country.

Shafiqur met Mufti Hannan in 1987 while studying in Pakistan. He started thinking abouting form a militant outfit Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (Huji) after returning to the country from Afghanistan. He was the founding member of Huji in 1990 and was its publicity secretary from 1990 to 1993. After that he was made amir of this banned outfit. Between 1997 and 2003, Shafiqur was the Sura member of Huji, the RAB claimed.