The name of Rabiul Islam alias Arav Khan, an accused in a case filed on charges of killing a police official in Bangladesh has been included in the Interpol’s red notice. He is the 63rd Bangladeshi to be included in the red notice of the international organisation that facilitates worldwide police cooperation and crime control.
The notice included a photograph of Rabiul and mentioned his gender, date and place of birth, age, nationality and the accusation against him.
The Interpol red notice mentioned Rabiul as a ‘Bangladeshi’ and the charge against him as ‘murder’. It also said that the man is wanted by Bangladesh.
Rabiul Islam, who has come to be known as gold trader Arav Khan in Dubai, is actually an accused in the case filed for the murder of Bangladesh Police’s Special Branch (SB) inspector Mamun Imran Khan.
Concerned police officials said after killing the SB inspector, Rabiul Islam fled to India and married there and managed a fake passport of that country in the name Arav Khan and went to Dubai with that.
Mamun was killed at a flat in the capital city’s Banani area on 8 July 2018. The law enforcement recovered Mamun’s charred body from a forest in Gazipur the next day.
Following this, the murdered SB inspector’s elder brother Jahangir Alam Khan filed a murder suit at Banani police station in the capital on Thursday.
Upon investigation, DB police filed a charge sheet against absconding Rabiul Islam alias Arav Khan and nine others in the case on 31 March, 2019. The trial is currently underway at the court of first additional metropolitan sessions judge court in Dhaka.
Arav Khan is still in Dubai but he is now under surveillance, said the Bangladesh foreign ministry spokesperson Seheli Sabrin at a weekly press briefing at the ministry on Thursday.
He came to the spotlight when top stars of Bangladesh’s cricket and entertainment business went to inaugurate a gold outlet, Arav Jewellers, in Dubai on 15 March. Since then the question of bringing him back to Bangladesh has become a widely discussed issue in the country.
Speaking to Prothom Alo about this on Tuesday, home minister Asaduzzaman Khan said, “Bangladesh has sent a letter to Interpol requesting the organisation to issue a red notice against Arav Khan (Rabiul). Interpol has accepted the letter.”
Home ministry sources said Interpol publishes information about any country and collets further information about that person. But this notice is not an internal arrest warrant.
Speaking to Prothom Alo about this, former inspector general of police (IGP) Nur Mohammad Tuesday said, “A country seeks help from the Interpol if a criminal flees to another country after committing any crime. The Interpol doesn’t arrest anyone. They only request the police of concerned countries to arrest the absconding criminal. Following that, the police of the concerned country act as per their law. The process is easier if there is an extradition treaty between the two concerned countries.”
Certain home ministry officials think despite the issuance of Interpol red notice it would not be easier to bring Rabiul back to Bangladesh from Dubai. They said the reason is though Rabiul is a Bangladeshi by birth he has been staying in Dubai using an Indian passport.
Bangladesh has been discussing informally through diplomatic channels with India seeking cancellation of Rabiul Islam’s Indian passport issued in the name of Arav Khan.