Staff Reporter :The wife of a top anti-terror police officer was stabbed and shot dead by three motorbike borne assailants in front of her minor son in the port city of Chittagong on Sunday, in the latest in a series of suspected attacks by militant groups.Mahmuda Khanam Mitu, 33, wife of Babul Akhtar, a Superintendent of Police (SP), was targeted by the assailants while she was on her way to drop her six-year-old first-grader son to a nearby bus stop for school.”Three assailants came in a motorcycle and then stabbed and shot Mitu near her residence at the city’s GEC intersection around 6:45am when she went out to drop her son for the school bus,” Mohiuddin Mahmud, Officer-in-Charge of Panchlaish Police Station told The New Nation quoting witnesses.The son was unhurt, he added.Mahmud said: “On information, police reached to the scene and found Mitu’s body lying on street in a poll of blood. We found nine wounds of stabbing on her back and belly”.Police recovered the body and sent to Chittagong Medical College Hospital morgue for autopsy, he added. The entire operation was over within a minute, investigators said.”Three bike-borne attackers ambushed Mitu in front of her minor son”, Paritosh Ghosh, Deputy Commissioner (North) of Chittagong Metropolitan Police (CMP) told The New Nation on Sunday evening quoting witnesses.He said the attackers first took her son away and then one of them stabbed his mother indiscriminately with a knife before shooting her. The attacker later shot Mitu on the head from point blank range to make sure she was dead before fleeing. The entire operation was over within a minute.”The bullet hit her on the left side of the head. Police found three live ammunitions and a used casing on the spot.” said Paritosh Ghose.Mitu also has a four-year-old daughter.Police, however, suspect that Mitu might have been targeted as her husband busted many militant outfits.Babul Akhtar was working as an additional deputy commissioner of Detective Branch (DB) in Chittagong before being recently promoted to the rank of Superintendent of Police (SP). Babul Akhtar, who was promoted in April, played a key role in nabbing top militants and busting their hideouts in the southern coastal district. It was his investigations which led to the busting of a hideout of banned JMB and arrest of its military wing Chief Mohamed Javed in October last year.”Since Babul Aktar was in counter-terrorism, we suspect that militants are behind the murder of his wife,” Moktar Ahmed, Deputy Commissioner of Chittagong’s Detective Branch , told The New Nation on Sunday night.”We primarily suspect that militants might have been involved in the killing as Babul Akter (victim’s husband) conducted drives against them in the past,” said Masood-ul-Hasan, additional commissioner of Chittagong Metropolitan Police.The victim’s husband fearlessly conducted operations against banned militant outfit Jama’atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), the police official told reporters at Chittagong Medical College Hospital where Mitu’s body has been kept.Babul, top officials of police and Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) were present there.”Babul Aktar is an efficient and honest police officer and played a key role in busting hideouts of the JMB. They might have killed his wife because they failed to get him,” Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal, Minister for Home Affairs told reporters told reporters after a programme held in Satkania upazila of Chittagong on Sunday..He added: The government will take stern action against those responsible for the killing of Babul’s wife. Meanwhile, Chittagong police claimed that they have been able to spot the suspected killers of Mitu following the grab of close circuit camera footages from the adjacent areas.There were three men, riding motorcycles, involved in the killing, said Paritosh Ghosh, citing to the CCTV footage grab.The footage showed the three fleeing the spot riding a motorbike. The driver of the motorcycle wore a punjabi or a fatua. The man in the middle had his face hidden behind the driver, while the third, at the rear, was a slim-figured man holding the gun.He, however, said they were yet to find a tape that captured the murder. Those available showed incidents prior and post to the killing.The police officials said the contents of the video footage and the statement given by the victim’s and witnesses matched with the killing incident.Ghosh said video footage from CCTV cameras installed on several nearby buildings confirmed the involvement of three assailants.
