Staff Reporter :
The Detective Branch (DB) of police, who have been given the cases over the murder of gay activist Xulhaz Mannan and his friend Mahbub Rabbi Tonoy, have launched a hunt for the four youths who were seen fleeing the scene after the killing incident from a video footage.
Already pressure mounted on Bangladesh after the two leading gay rights activists were hacked to death on Monday, the latest in a series of terrifying attacks on intellectuals, writers and religious minorities for which only a handful of people have been convicted.
At least six miscreants carrying machetes and guns entered an apartment building in Dhaka on the day and killed Xulhaz Mannan, editor of a magazine for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community and fellow activist Mahbub Tonoy.
The DB men, put in charge of the two cases initiated over the murders, said the machete-wielding killers fled the area firing from their guns. Police have collected footages from CCTV cameras of nearby buildings and those filmed on mobile phones by some locals. Meanwhile, different international organisations and rights groups have said the latest killings as well as the murder of a university professor appeared to show that the attackers were expanding their range of targets. They demanded justice and greater protection for minority groups in the conservative Muslim-majority nation. According to DB sources, ‘identifiable’ images of four youths were obtained from one of the CCTV videos. “We have crosschecked the images of the youths with the witnesses. Four of them have been identified. Now we are trying to locate them,” added the sources.
bdnews24.com adds: A policeman was injured when the police patrol in the area tried to stop the attackers. He managed to snatch a bag from them. Police said ‘important evidence’ was found in the bag. A DB official also claimed ‘important clue’ was obtained from a mobile phone found in the bag.
The law enforcers, however, have not identified or arrested any suspect. Witness accounts suggest that the killers knew they would have to flee through a crowd of people and they were ready for that. The forensic experts who have conducted the post-mortem examinations think the killers were well-trained. DMP Commissioner Md Asaduzzaman Mia said in a news conference earlier on Wednesday police have obtained ‘more leads’. He declined to disclose the ‘leads’ since the investigation was under way.
A CCTV camera video of a nearby building, a copy of which is with bdnews24.com, shows five youths running away. Most of the witnesses said they saw five youths fleeing the scene. Some others said there were more youths with them. Police confirmed the attackers were seven in number. Police have cited security guards in the building where the murders took place to say the assailants entered the building posing as couriers around 5:30pm. They barged into the first-floor flat after wounding one of the guards and confining two others to a room on the ground floor. Besides Tonoy, Mannan’s 90-year old mother and a house help were in the flat. A resident of the building said the attackers had come in the afternoon as well but returned on hearing that Mannan was not home. DMP chief Mia said the killers took only five minutes to complete the mission. The assailants, in T-shirts and jeans, were seen running away with backpacks.
Police could not get any footage of the attacks on secular bloggers and online activists, including that on writer-blogger Avijit Roy in February last year. A killer of Juba League leader Reazul Haque Khan Milki was identified from a footage, but police are yet to track down any of those whose images had been obtained from CCTV camera footages during sexual assault on women at the Dhaka University during Bangla New Year celebrations last year. In the attack on Mannan and Tonoy, several policemen on patol saw the assailants.
Locals caught two killers of online activist Oyasiqur Rahman Babu after the attack in Dhaka’s Tejgaon last year. Police could not make any arrest in connection with the murder.
