AL leader flees to Singapore amid graft probe

Dhaka Wanderers Club’s casino partner and Gendaria Awami League leader Enamul Haque Enu’s brother Rupon Bhuiyan reportedly left the country for Singapore past week amid ongoing investigation of Rapid Action Battalion and Criminal Investigation Department into their involvement in casino-like illegal gambling centre.

‘We learnt that Rupon recently left the country,’ battalion-3 commanding officer Lieutenant Colonel Shafi Ullah Bulbul told New Age on Tuesday.

Enamul was Gendaria thana Awami League vice-president and Rupon was the joint general secretary of the unit of the ruling Awami League.

Shafi Ullah declined to comment on how Rupon managed to flee but one of his officials said that they came to know Monday morning that Rupon left the country within a week.

‘We knew he had been in the country since September 18 but we could not arrest him. His brother is currently staying in Thailand,’ the official said.

The investigators said that Rupon was tasked to hide their cash about Tk 11 crore and he kept the money in five volts which were seized by the battalion.

‘We found Tk 5 crore in cash and Tk 3 crore transformed into gold and all those were stored into the five vaults we seized,’ said one of the investigators who joined the drive in September.

The investigators said they came to know that Enamul left his house in Dhaka few hours after the first raid at the house of the then Dhaka south city Juba League organising secretary Khalid Mahmud Bhuiyan on September 18.

Soon after the raid, Enamul engaged his brother Rupon to manage the cash and left country for Bangkok on September 19, the investigators said.

Rupon bought five vaults from a steel-furniture workshop at Narinda which led the battalion to investigate further into their wealth.

In the subsequent raid, the battalion found Tk 5.05 crore in cash, around 8.5kgs of gold worth Tk 3-4 crore and six firearms stashed in the five vaults.

Following the raid, the battalion officials said that the two brothers own 15 houses, and they used their firearms to terrorise people in the area.

The battalion on September 18 arrested Khalid and continued arresting many other leaders of pro-AL bodies, including SM Golam Kibria Shamim, and businessmen.

The battalion arrested Dhaka south city Awami Juba League president Ismail Chowdhury Samrat along with his associate Arman in Branmanbaria on October 6.

News Courtesy: www,newagebd.net