Police verifying identities of 10 of 12 killed ‘extremists’

Law enforcing authorities said on Sunday that they were examining the identities of 10 of the 12 suspected extremists killed in Gazipur, Tangail and Ashulia in Dhaka on Saturday.
Police and hospital authorities said that none came to identify the bodies kept at respective hospitals.
The police so far formally identified one of the seven suspects killed in Operation Spate-8 conducted jointly by the police headquarters and the Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime unit at Patartek in Gazipur as Faridul Islam Akash, believed to be regional commander of Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh for Dhaka area.
The Rapid Action Battalion identified another extremism suspect Abdur Rahman, 35, who was arrested injured after reportedly jumping from a multi-storey building during a raid at Baipail of Ashulia and died at Enam Medical College Hospital at Savar on Saturday night.
Asked if the suspects could have been arrested alive, Dhaka Metropolitan Police commissioner Asaduzzaman Miah told reporters that they always tried to arrest suspects but could not make it.
He said the suspects were asked to surrender but they used weapons and hurled bombs at the law enforcers. 
He also said that deserted major Syed Mohammad Ziaul Hoque, believed to have orchestrated a number of extremist attacks and for whom a bounty of Tk 20 lakh was announced in August, was now under surveillance and would be arrested soon.
After the Operation Spate-8 concluded on Saturday afternoon, police officials claimed that there were huge cache of arms and ammunition in the Patartek building. 
Gazipur superintendent of police Harun-or-Rashid said on Sunday that they seized three firearms including a ‘Pakistan-made’ revolver, 100 empty cartridges of .22 bore weapon and 105 bullets of pistols from the house where the bodies of seven were found.
He said that caretaker of the building Osman Goni was prosecuted for not keeping details of the tenants. 
The two suspects killed in another raid a a house about 500 metres away from Patartek were identified as Rashed Miah and Towhidul Islam, both of Narsingdi. 
On Saturday, police claimed that Towhidul was a student of Dhaka University of Engineering and Technology but the university on Sunday denied that he was their student.
‘We have got the names from the landlord, but not confirmed about their identities...We still are verifying their identities,’ said RAB-1 commanding officer Tuhin Mohammad Masud. 
The battalion official said they seized one AK-22 rifle reportedly made in China, a pistol of 7.65 reportedly made in Italy and 90 bullets.
Post-mortem examinations of nine bodies were performed at the Shaheed Tazuddin Medical College Hospital on Sunday.
Joydevpur police station officer-in-charge Khadaker Rezaul Karim said that the bodies of the extremism suspects would be kept at Dhaka Medical College for DNA profiling. 
New Age correspondent in Tangail reported that the battalion now said they were not certain about the identities of two suspected of extremism killed during a raid at a house at Kagmara in the district town on Saturday morning. 
On Saturday night, the battalion in a text stated that the two were identified as Atikur Rahman and Sagar Hossain, both of Charghat in Rajshahi.
RAB-12 crime prevention company-3 commander Muhammad Mohiuddin Faruki said on Sunday that they were still examining their identities. 
He claimed that they had circulated the names based on two national identity cards seized from them. The photos of the cards were correct but the identities were doctored.
The elite force said that it seized one pistol, one revolver, 10 machetes, five bullets, two laptops, Tk 64,912 in cash and some books inspiring ‘religious extremism’ from the house rented on September 27.
Faruki said that filing of a case against the deceased and seven other unnamed people was underway.
The battalion at Ashulia of Dhaka said Abdur Rahman was the main financer of JMB and they seized Tk 30 lakh in cash, one firearm, ammunition, explosives, mobile jammer and sharp weapons from him. 
The body of Abdur Rahman was kept at Dhaka Medical College on Sunday after post mortem examination.
Forensic medicine expert at the medical college Shohel Mahmud said that the man might have fallen from height. 
Details of Abdur Rahman could not be established, but he hailed from Satkhira district headquarters. The police in their inquest stated that he fell down from height while he was trying to escape arrest during the raid.
Police officials in Sirajganj said that they had arrested three family members of ‘JMB leader’ Faridul Islam on September 5. The police officials also said Faridul had radicalised his family members. 
They said that he graduated from computer science department of Sirajganj Polytechnic Institute some one year and half ago. 
The district police got his name after arresting some radicalised youths in the district. He was also named in a charge sheet submitted earlier by the Sirajganj police.
Polytechnic institute principal Abdul Hannan said that intelligence agencies often used to visit him to inquire about Faridul. Sirajganj Detective Branch sub-inspector Rowsan Ali said that they had been looking for him for over a year but he had gone into hiding.
New Age Correspondent in Tangail added that post-mortem examinations of the bodies were conducted on Saturday afternoon. Each of the bodies sustained three bullets in the chest. Both the bodies were preserved in the mortuary of Tangail district hospital and none claimed for the bodies.
On Saturday, the counter terrorism unit started interrogating Shaila Afrin, Afrin Priyoti and Abedatul Arfin in connection with extremism and a case filed with Lalbagh police station following the killing of extremism suspect Tanvir Quadri in a raid at a Azimpur house on September 10. 
The three suspects were under treatment at Dhaka Medical College Hospital until Saturday morning. 
On Sunday afternoon, a metropolitan magistrate, Mohammad Nurunnabi, remanded the three women in custody for seven days for interrogation.

News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net