Attacks on Dipan, Tutul: One year on, charge sheets not submitted

One year into the killing of publisher Faisal Arefin Dipan and the hacking of Ahmedur Rashid Tutul and two others, detectives are still not sure when they will be able to submit charge sheets in the cases.

Though five of the suspects have been arrested and three of them have already confessed the crimes, pressing charges would take some time as most of the killers are still on the run, said detectives.

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The Detective Branch officials investigating the cases said they have already detected all the suspected killers and masterminds and unearthed the motive.

Of the arrestees, Abdus Sabur, a leader of banned militant outfit Ansar al-Islam, confessed his involvement in the attacks on Dipan and Tutul and two friends of Tutul. 

Moinul Hasan Shamim alias Sifat, allegedly a member of the same outfit, admitted being involved in the Dipan murder.

Another arrestee, Sumon Hossain Patwari, confessed his involvement in the attack that left Tutul and his two friends injured. 

Another accused in the case, Shariful Islam alias Saleh alias Arif, was killed in an “encounter” with detectives on June 19.

“We have made remarkable progress in the cases. We've made some arrests and some of them have already confessed their involvement,” Mashruqure Rahman Khaled, deputy commissioner of the Detective Branch of Dhaka Metropolitan Police, told The Daily Star yesterday.

Asked when they would submit the charge sheets, he said they are hunting for the other accused who include killers, masterminds and trainers. “Once we arrest most of the accused, we'll submit the charge sheets.”

On October 31 last year, in what appeared to be synchronised attacks on publishers of secularist authors, Dipan of Jagriti Prakashani was murdered at his office in the capital's Shahbagh.

Just hours before the attack on Dipan, Tutul and his blogger friends Ranadipam Basu and Tareque Rahim were injured in a machete attack at Tutul's publishing house Shuddhoswar in Lalmatia.

Mashruqure, who is supervising the investigation, also said Ansar al-Islam perpetrated both the attacks.

Ansar al-Islam, said to be the Bangladesh branch of al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), has reportedly been carrying out targeted attacks on secular writers, bloggers, publishers, free-thinkers and gay rights activists for the last couple of years. Sacked and absconding army officer, Major Ziaul Haque is allegedly the military commander of the outfit.

Police had earlier told reporters that execution of the plot to kill writer-blogger Avijit Roy encouraged pro-al-Qaeda militant outfit Ansar al-Islam to hatch the plan to kill publisher Faisal Arefin Dipan.

Both Tutul and Dipan were publishers of free-thinking online activist Avijit, hacked to death by machete-wielding assailants in TSC area on February 26 last year.

According to confessional statements of the three arrestees, 19 Ansar al-Islam operatives recruited from different parts of the country took training on firearms and machetes at a hideout in Tongi area, detectives said quoting the confessional statements.

Later, 10 of them divided in two groups -- five in each -- carried out the attacks on Dipan, Tutul and the two others the same day.

Alongside machetes, they carried firearms with them.

The sacked major, known in the organisation as Ishtiaq, used to visit the den of those militants and train them, according to detectives.

Commenting on the investigation, Dipan's father Prof Abul Quasem Fazlul Huq, an intellectual and a writer, said law enforcers are willing to unearth the mystery of the case and the progress made in the investigation is credible.

He said, “The killing of Dipan was an attack on free-thinking and people's right to express opinion.”

He added that a cultural renaissance, for which Dipan worked through his publishing house, would stop recurrence of such attacks.