Bangabandhu’s killer Abdul Majed arrested
One of the killers of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman has been arrested in Dhaka.
Convicted fugitive Abdul Majed was detained on Monday night, Dhaka Metropolitan Police’s deputy commissioner Masudur Rahman (Media and Public Relations) confirmed to Prothom Alo on Tuesday.
A total of 12 perpetrators were handed capital punishment in 2009 for killing the Father of the Nation.
Five of them -- Syed Farooq Rahman, Sultan Shahriar Rashid Khan, Bazlul Huda, AKM Mohiuddin Ahmed, and Muhiuddin Ahmed -- were executed on 27 January 2010.
One of the convicts Aziz Pasha died in Zimbabwe in 2002.
As Majed has been arrested, five of the remaining fugitives are Khandaker Abdur Rashid, Shariful Haque Dalim, SHMB Noor Chowdhury, AM Rashed Chowdhury and Moslehuddin Khan. All of them are former army personnel.
The fugitives have been hiding in different countries. The government is trying to bring them back.
Earlier a Prothom Alo report in 2015 said two killers of Bangabandhu --AM Rashed Chowdhury and Moslem Uddin –live in the United States at present. The US has granted political asylum to AM Rashed Chowdhury but Moslem Uddin was denied this status.
News agency BSS adds:
“He has been arrested and has been sent to court for subsequent legal procedures,” home minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal told in brief comments confirming BSS about the development.
A police officer familiar with the incident said a team of their Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime (CTTC) unit arrested Majed in a predawn raid at Mirpur area responding to secret information about his presence there.
“He was roaming around a shrine in Mirpur when policemen arrested him,” another official said.
Majed is one of the six absconding ex-army officers who were handed down capital punishment after trial in absentia.
A magistrate court, meanwhile, sent him to jail minutes after he was produced on the dock at Old Dhaka’s Court Complex while the handcuffed convict, put on a bulletproof police jacket and helmet as well, was wearing a white pajama and Panjabi.
“Majed was brought to the court at around 12.15pm . . . Dhaka Metropolitan Magistrate AM Zulfikar Hayat passed his order at 12.55pm asking police to send him to jail,” a police officer told BSS at the scene.
Assistant public prosecutor Hemayet Uddin said Majed told the court that he was hiding in India and returned home recently.
But, he said, Majed was not allowed to give any statement as he wanted as “according to law a convict does not have any scope to say anything at this stage of legal procedure”.
Legal experts said a report on his arrest would now be sent to Dhaka District Judge’s court, which originally tried the killers, for subsequent legal procedures.
“The stipulated time for appealing against his death penalty expired long ago . . . apparently Majed now just can seek presidential mercy,” a Supreme Court lawyer said.