Police official’s wife shot dead

Three suspected militants riding a motorbike stabbed and shot dead the wife of an acclaimed counter-terrorism police official, Babul Akhter, while his son escaped injury, near their rented house in the port city on Sunday morning.
The 30-year-old Mahmuda Khanam Mitu, the wife of recently promoted police superintendent who is set to join the police’s counter terrorism and transnational crime unit, came under attack when she was going to the city’s GEC intersection from their house to get their nine-year-old son on a school bus around 6:45am.
No one so far claimed responsibility for the ‘cowardly attack’ on the family member though the police investigators suspect it was likely of revenge killing as Babul Akhter had led a number of drives against Islamist militants in the Chittagong region which left many of them dead.
A number of police officials told New Age that
Babul, a second generation police official, was under threat mainly from Jama’at ul Mujahideen Bangladesh and had been moving with extra precaution in recent months.
The killing also bore the hallmark of previous attacks on secular bloggers, activists, intellectuals, spiritual leaders and religious minorities, but senior police officials said they have never met a situation when militants targeted their family members.
The home minister, Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal, told reporters at the function in Chittagong ‘…his active role in combating militancy is praiseworthy. Militants killed his wife as they could not kill Babul.’
Babul’s school-going son witnessed the attack while police recovered CCTV footage from a nearby establishment to identify the attackers.
According to witnesses, three people – one who was riding the motorbike had a helmet on, the person in the middle with a knife and last person with a small firearm—on a motor-cycle hit Babul’s wife and pushed her on to the street.
Once she fell down, one of the attackers stabbed her indiscriminately while another shot at her.
The miscreants left the place and there was a microbus behind the motorcycle, said a witness, whose name was not used due to security reasons.
‘The whole episode took place in less than a minute,’ said Poritosh Ghosh, deputy commissioner (North) of Chittagong Metropolitan Police.
They termed it a premeditated killing. Police recovered four cartridges of a 7.65mm pistol.
Abdus Sattar, a security guard of the building where the police official lives, said Mahmuda left the building around 6:40am along with his son.
‘After a few minutes, I heard the sound of gunshots and saw people were running. I went forward and spotted her on the ground. I saw her son crying near the spot,’ said Sattar.
‘I was looking for the police but no policeman was present on the road during the incident. She was on the road about 30 to 40 minutes. Later, she was taken to hospital,’ said Sattar.
At the Chittagong Medical College Hospital, Babul was seen crying and asking the Pachlaish police station officer-in-charge Mohiuddin Mahmud ‘why was my family not kept protected. I had said they [the militants] would follow me.’
Mohiuddin Mahmud told New Age they had deployed police personnel at his rented house round the clock. He also claimed the two policemen were present at his apartment on Sunday.
Aminul Haque Sarker, the on-duty doctor at Chittagong Medical College Hospital, said Mahmuda was brought to the hospital around 8:45am and then was declared dead.
Police Bureau of Investigation’s inspector Abu Zafar Md Omor Faruque, who made the inquest report, said a bullet pierced through the left corner of her head entering from just above the eyebrow.
Besides, she was stabbed seven to eight times on the hands, back and abdomen.
About the motive of the killing, the CMP commissioner Iqbal Bahar suspected militant links over the incident and said the attackers would be nabbed through any means.

Mahmuda Khanam Mitu

An official of 24BCS police service, Babul, had served most of his time in career in Chittagong and Cox’s Bazar and was trained in the United States and other international destinations.
Babul was awarded with the highest gallantry award, Bangladesh Police Medal, and also received President Police medals at least twice for his outstanding services.
He had been in Dhaka off and on after his promotion and attachment with the police headquarters, but his family—the wife, and their son and daughter—used to live in the rented house at OR Nizam Road Residential Area.
He left Chittagong for Dhaka on Wednesday to report to the police headquarters.
On October 2015, Babul Akter, the then additional deputy commissioner of CMP detective branch, was accompanying ‘JMB military wing chief’ Md Javed in a raid on the Oxygen-Kuwaish Road very early in the morning after interrogation at night.
During the over-night raid, Javed, a textiles engineer by profession, was killed in a bomb explosion which police claimed had happened ‘accidentally’.
Javed was arrested during a search operation at a house in Chittagong’s Khawaznagar Azimpara following the arrest of four other JMB activists. Police said nine hand grenades, 120 rounds of ammunition, a pistol, 10 knives and a large quantity of bomb-making materials were seized from them.
After the death of Babul’s wife, gloom descended among his colleagues, especially who work in counter-militancy. The home minister also visited the victim’s house in Chittagong.
The inspector general of police AKM Shahidul Hoque expressed deep condolence to the affected family.
Bangladesh Police Service Association president Asaduzzaman Mia, the Dhaka Metropolitan Police commissioner, in a statement protested the ‘cowardly attack’ on the wife of his colleague.
The association also promised that the miscreants would be definitely nabbed.
New Age correspondent in Magura said that the district police superintendent AKM Ehsanullah, along with his family member and other police officials, have visited Babul’s father Abdul Wadud, a retired police official, and mother Shahida Begum, in the district headquarters.
‘We have arranged necessary steps for the protection of Babul’s family,’ said Ehsanullah.
More than three dozen attacks on minority Sufi, Shia and Ahmadiya Muslims, Hindus, Christians and foreigners took place in the past few months.
Islamist militancy suspects either were blamed or claimed responsibility for such killings and attacks, including on one an atheist and another liberal educationist.
US-based SITE Intelligence claimed that Islamic State group and ‘Bangladeshi branch of Al-Qaeda’ had claimed responsibility for the killings and attacks.
The government, however, denied the presence of Islamic State and Al-Qaeda in the country and said that some home-grown militants were behind the crimes.

News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net