7 bodies found in Mirpur ‘extremist den’

A suspected extremist and six others, including two minors, were found dead on Wednesday at a multi-storey building in the capital’s Mirpur in a raid by Rapid Action Battalion members that continued since Monday night.
The battalion officials said bodies of seven people — ‘notorious’ extremist Abdullah who sheltered the plotters of the Holey Artisan café attack on July 1, 2016, in different times, his two wives, their two children and possibly two of their workers — were found lying scattered, some of them beyond recognition as they were so ‘charred’.
The Darussalam police identified Abdullah as Meer Akramul Karim of Chuadanga, while four others were Karim’s first wife Nasrin, 40, and his son Osama, 11, and second wife Fatema, 26, and his another son Omar, 2.
The police were trying to identify two other men and a police official said they found four bodies in one of the three rooms while three others in another room.
The bodies were sent to Dhaka Medical College for post-mortem examination to determine how the people died.
After more than 40 hours since they cordoned off the apartment and evacuated other tenants, RAB director general Benazir Ahmed told reporters on the spot that the extremist had carried out explosions, causing the deaths.
The RAB chief said that the extremist and his family were given time to surrender to the authorities but it did not work until Tuesday night.
The battalion branded Abdullah, as an operative of Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh since 2005 and said he later became one of the policymakers of JMB’s Sarwan Jahan-Tamim Ahmed Chowdhury faction. Abdullah was a financier of Sarwar-Tamim faction, the RAB chief said.
Islamic State inspired operatives –Shohel Mahfuz, Tamim Ahmed and Sarwar Jahan — who were behind serious of attacks including July 1 attack in 2016 used to spend nights at the house of Abdullah, according to the battalion officials.
Both Sarwar and Tamim were killed in operations in October and August in 2016. Terror monitoring agencies identified Canadian-Bangladeshi Tamim as the then operational commander of
Islamic State in Bangladesh, which, however, was denied by the government.
Inspector general of police AKM Shahidul Hoque visited the six-storey building, located some 200 metres from Darussalam Police Station on the west and 50 metres from an office of assistant commissioner of police on the north.
The police chief, however, did not make any comment on the operation where the Fire Service and Civil Defence, Criminal Investigation Department and another unit later joined the search operation.
RAB officials alleged that Abdullah was a pigeon trader, a supplier of UPS and IPS, and mechanic of the refrigerator in the flat at Bardhanbari near Darussalam Police Station. 
Darussalam police inspector (investigation) Farukul Islam said no criminal charge was found against Abdullah so far.
None case was filed and none was arrested until Wednesday evening in this connection.
The house, namely Kamal Prava, owned by Habibullah Bahar Azad, has 24 apartments and RAB managed to evacuate 65 people from 23 apartments early Tuesday.
Over 19 hours after the beginning of the raid, RAB legal and media wing director Mufti Mahmud Khan told the media about 6:30pm on Tuesday that Abdullah had agreed to surrender with members of his family. 
But witnesses heard big explosion and plumes of fire about 9:45pm on Tuesday. 
RAB had been conducting the raid as a follow-up of a raid in Tangail on Monday evening where two suspected extremists were arrested and a drone, knives and books encouraging extremism were seized.
The battalion said Abdullah had been living in the house for 10 or 12 years and had stored explosives, acid and petrol.
Our Tangail Correspondent reported that the siblings — Nurul Huda Masum, 30, and Mazharul Islam Khokon, 25, sons of Abul Hasan Chishti, of village Mosinda of Elenga under Kalihati — who were arrested on Monday night, were remanded in police custody for four days each.
The judicial magistrate Rupom Kanti Das granted the siblings to be remanded in custody.
A team of RAB-12 arrested the two brothers branding them as suspected JMB members from their house on Monday evening.
The battalion claimed that they also recovered a drone, electronic devices and local weapons from their possession.
The younger brother, Khokon, had studied at Islamic University in the Libyan capital Tripoli but returned home in 2012 without finishing his degree. 

News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net