ATTACKS ON PUBLISHERS, BLOGGERS : Dipan buried, no headway in investigations [ Tritiyo Matra News ]

ATTACKS ON PUBLISHERS, BLOGGERS : Dipan buried, no headway in investigations

Local November 02, 2015

Secular blogger and publisher Faisal Arefin Dipan was laid to rest at Azimpur graveyard on Sunday afternoon with the police making no headway in the investigations into Saturday’s serial attacks on him and three others in the capital.
Dipan, who ran Jagriti Prokashony, was found murdered on Saturday at his office at Shahbagh Aziz Supermarket, a hub of writers and publishers, at Shahbagh.
Three hours before the incident, publisher Ahmedur Rashid Chowdhury Tutul of Shuddhaswar and secular bloggers Ranadipam Basu and Tareq Rahim were hacked by unknown assailants at Shuddhaswar office at Lalmatia.
They were now undergoing treatment at Dhaka Medical College Hospital.
The hospital casualty department physician Ashraf Uddin Khan told New Age on Sunday evening that Tareq Rahim’s condition was not stable yet. A bullet hit in the waist had not been removed yet. He had skull injury and his left hand’s condition was still bad.
Tareq underwent several surgeries and was now in postoperative observation, Ashraf said.
Ahmedur Rashid Chowdhury Tutul’s condition was now stable, but he sustained injury in the head and neck, Ashraf said adding that Ranadipan Basu was out of danger.
The police said they could make no headway in the investigation into the attacks. The motives were not determined and the assailants were not identified.
Home minister Asaduzzaman Khan said the attacks were ‘isolated incidents’ and the law and order was ‘good’.
‘Saturday’s attacks are isolated incidents and such attacks also occur in other countries of the world,’ the minister told reporters at his ministry office on Sunday.
Dhaka Metropolitan Police joint commissioner [Detective Branch] Monirul Islam said they were suspecting that Islamist extremists carried out the attacks as the attacks were similar to other recent attacks on secular bloggers.
Talking to reporters at his office on Sunday, he said that both the attacks at Shahbagh and Lalmatia were carried out simultaneously and the types of attacks were similar. The perpetrators were trained by same extremist outfit like Ansarulla Bangla Team.
Police collected footage of close-circuit cameras from Aziz Supermarket where Faisal Arefin Dipan was killed. These were now being scrutinised, said metropolitan police deputy commissioner Muntasirul Islam.
Dhaka Medical College Hospital forensic department chairman Abu Shama, who conducted the autopsy of Faisal Arefin’s body on Sunday morning, told New Age that Dipan was hacked in the back of the neck. Marks of three stabs, around three inches deep, were found.
‘His spinal cord was severed…None can survive more than five minutes after such stabbing,’ he said.
Faisal Arefin Dipan’s namaz-e-janaza was held at the Dhaka University central mosque after Juhr prayers.
Eminent citizens, university teachers, writers, secular bloggers, publishers, cultural activists and students attended the janaza.
Talking to the audience, Dipan’s father, Abul Kashem Fazlul Haque, also Bangla department professor at Dhaka University, said his economics graduate son got involved in publication with a passion for books and love for writers.
He said that he expected an upheaval of cultural and political enlightenment to stop killings of secular people. Traditional legal measure was not enough to curb such crimes, he said.
Dipan’s son Ridat Farhan, who sits for final examination of junior school certificate before attending his father’s janaza, said he wanted justice. ‘I want trial of the killers immediately,’ he said.
Dhaka University professor emeritus Serajul Islam Choudhury, vice-chancellor AAMS Arefin Siddique and prime minister’s adviser Tawfiq-e-Elahi Chowdhury were among the attendants at the janaza.
No case was filed in the two attacks with Shahbagh and Mohammadpur police stations till 9:30pm.