India’s NDTV has reported that Indian intelligence agencies have handed over Risaldar Moslehuddin, fugitive condemned to death for the murder of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, to Bangladesh.
Mosleuddin is believed to be the person who shot Mujib, according to the report NDTV published on Tuesday.
Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and most members of his family were shot to death in their Dhanmondi house on August 15, 1975.
Earlier, various Indian media reported that Moslehuddin was arrested at Bongaon in West Bengal in India recently. According to reports, Mosleuddin, was handed over Monday evening to Bangladesh at an undisclosed land border crossing.
‘Are you confirmed that Moslehuddin has been arrested and handed over to us? We cannot say anything before we are confirmed,’ said law minister Anisul Huq, also head of the taskforce for bringing back the fugitive killers of Sheikh Mujib.
He said that the media would be informed once they were confirmed about it.
Bangladesh police National Central Bureau (Interpol) assistant inspector general Mahiul Islam told New Age on Tuesday that they came to know about the reported arrest from media reports on Monday and later on the day communicated with their Indian counterpart seeking details of it.
Mahiul said on Wednesday that they were still waiting for India’s response.
The NDTV online report read, ‘In February, New Delhi had handed over an absconding assassin to Dhaka’ and ‘On April 12, Bangladesh executed the first fugitive, Abdul Majed, 73, who used to be a captain in the Army.’
The report with the dateline in Kolkata read that both assassins were reportedly living in West Bengal for over two decades. Abdul Majed was picked up from near his home in south Kolkata late February. Moslehuddin was detained in Bongaon, some 70km away.
Abdul Majed had been passing himself off as a teacher while Moslehuddin ran a small herbal medicine shop. According to easternlinks.com, a news portal that broke the story, Majed revealed Moslehuddin’s whereabouts before he was hanged.
‘Official confirmation of the operation is awaited both in India and Bangladesh,’ the report stated.
When initial reports about the operation emerged along with photos and videos of the suspect, there was a lot of confusion because some sources claimed the man in the photo - who was allegedly Mosleuddin - had died a few years ago.
On April 7, the counter terrorism and transnational crime unit of Dhaka Metropolitan Police announced the arrest of Abdul Majed from Mirpur.
The CTTC deputy commissioner Saiful Islam said they just came to know from media nothing else.
‘We are not aware of it,’ he said.
On January 27, 2009, five army officers were hanged for the murders after the Appellate Division rejected their review petitions against their death sentences.
The executed five army men were Syed Faruque Rahman, Shahriar Rashid Khan, Mohiuddin Ahmed (artillery), AKM Mohiuddin Ahmed (lancer) and Bazlul Huda.
AKM Mohiuddin was brought back from the United States in 2007.
The remaining five fugitive convicts were Abdur Rashid, Shariful Huq Dalim, Rashed Chowdhury, SHBM Nur Chowdhury, and Risalder Moslehuddin. Another convict Md Aziz Pashad died in Zimbabwe in 2001.
