‘Kalyanpur militant’ Regan went missing with ‘Gabtali SI killer’ Masud in 2015

One of the nine Kalyanpur ‘militants’, Rakibul Hasan Regan, had gone missing last year along with Masud Rana who was caught red-handed when he knifed SI Ibrahim Molla at a police check post in Gabtali of the capital city on 22 October 2015, according to the General Diaries filed in connection with their disappearance.

The GDs filed by their respective families said both of them went missing on 26 July 2015.

Both of them were students of Bogra Shah Sultan College and were preparing for admission in undergraduate courses after the higher secondary examination, according to the GDs.

Regan’s mother Mosammat Rokeya Aktar, a resident of Jamilnagar in Bogra town, filed the GD (number 1720) with Bogra sadar police station on 27 July 2015 while Masud’s father Md Hasan Ali, a resident of Kesharta village of Adamdighi upazila of the district, filed the other GD (number 2001) on 30 July 2015.

According to the diaries, Regan was 18 and Masud was 17 at the time of the filing GD.

Masud Rana was arrested from the scene after Darussalam police’s Assistant Sub-Inspector Ibrahim Molla, 37, was stabbed to death at a check post at Gabtali on 22 October 2015 night.

At that time, the police had claimed that during interrogations Masud confessed to his involvement in the politics of Islami Chhatra Shibir, an allegation his family members denied while talking to this correspondent.

Besides, another youth named Mohaiminul Hasan Shihab went missing from Bogra on 10 September 2015 and his mother Jahanara Begum filed a GD with Dupchanchia police station on 20 September 2015.

Talking to newsmen on Thursday, Dupchanchia police station officer-in-charge Nazrul Islam, however, said he has no information about any GD filed by Shihab’s mother.

Bogra police station sub-inspector Abdul Monnaf told the Prothom Alo on Wednesday that Shihab was arrested from Fulkuri village of Dupchanchia days after the killing of two suspected militants in a bomb blast in Sherpur on 3 April 2016 and was shown arrest in the Sherpur bomb blast case.

Shihab used to live with his family in the house of Regan’s family at Bogra town’s Jamilnagar on rent. Regan and his family used to live in the same house, according to the police official.

The police official claimed that they were on the hunt to arrest Regan when came to know that all of the three went missing around the same time.

Talking to newsmen on Thursday, Regan’s mother Rokeya Aktar said her son Regan wasn’t used to committing crimes. “My son stopped mixing with other boys after the young tenant [Shihab] came to our house. Even since then, the three of them [Regan, Shihab, and Masud] have started hanging out together.”

Regan’s sister who wished to be unnamed claimed that Shihab took her brother away and he confessed it during the police interrogation. “Later, Shihab fled the place [unknown] and returned, then later was arrested. But we did not get to know anything about the whereabouts of our brother.”

Incidentally, Masud Rana used to live in a student mess called Puran Bogra Masjid Chhatrabash [Old Bogra Mosque Student Mess], in close proximity of Jamilnagar.

The police are claiming that they caught Rakibul Hasan Regan injured during a police raid in capital’s Kalyanpur early Tuesday during which nine people were killed in police firing.

Regan is now undergoing treatment at the Dhaka Medical College Hospital in police custody.

“Regan’s mother was called in to the police station to confirm whether the youth who was arrested during the Kalyanpur drive is this Rakibul Hasan Regan and after the confirmation his mother has been released,” Bogra sadar police station officer-in-charge Abul Bashar told the Prothom Alo on Tuesday.

The police have claimed that all of nine killed and Regan are members of the banned local militant outfit Jamaat-ul Mujahideen, Bangladesh, notoriously known as JMB, although the killed people were seen carrying the flag of the Middle East-based international terrorist organisation Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant aka ISIL aka ISIS aka IS in the photographs released by the Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) of the ‘militants’ after the raid.