Police have arrested the third disgraced RAB officer, former Lt Commander MM Rana, a day after his two colleagues were nabbed, for his suspected involvement in the Narayanganj multiple murders. He was arrested around 1:30am Sunday from Dhaka Cantonment area, Narayanganj Superintendent of Police Khandker Mohid Uddin said. He told bdnews24.com that they were already on their way back to Narayanganj. Mohid Uddin, however, did not divulge the details of the arrest. Around 4am on Saturday, police officials investigating the seven murders arrested former Lt Col Tarek Sayeed Mohammad, who was the Commanding Officer of the Narayanganj-based RAB-11, and a former army Major Arif Hossain from the same area. But they did not find Rana then. The first two were presented before a Narayanganj court on Saturday and it sent them to police remand for five days. Narayanganj police arrested Rana, now a former Navy officer, two days after the military gave them the go ahead to take action against the former officers of the elite force, who are suspected to have played a major role in abducting and killing seven people in Narayanganj. Seven men, including the port city’s Ward-2 Councillor Nazrul Islam, who was also the panel mayor, and senior lawyer Chandan Kumar Sarkar, were abducted on Apr 27. Their bodies were fished out from the Shitalakhyya River over two days – Apr 31 and May 1 — a development that outraged the nation. Two days after the seven were abducted, the three officers of RAB-11 in the district were removed from their posts and sent back to their parent forces. The trio was retired after bodies of the seven were discovered. The action had also followed Nazrul’s father-in-law Shahidul Islam’s charges that some RAB officials were bribed to carry out the murders. Against the backdrop of these events, the High Court on May 11 in an order asked the inspector general of police to arrest them. But their arrests were delayed by several days due to apparent procedural complications between police and the army, though there were no legal barriers. However, their arrests came only after the Armed Forces Division on Thursday gave clearance to the police to arrest them. –bdnews24.com
