Three of the arrestees -- Shafiqul Islam Shafiq, Abul Hashem Rana and Shah Alam -- were placed on a seven-day police remand yesterday.

The three arrestees and Nure Alam were caught in separate police drives in Dhaka and Narayanganj. Shafiq and Hashem were named along with 12 others in the confessional statement of George Miah, who is also an accused in the case.

The CID claimed Shafiq and Hashem admitted their involvement in the August 21 attack apparently carried out to kill AL core command including party president Sheikh Hasina.

CID sources said they had employed a woman informant to hunt down Shafiq of Gopalganj and Hashem of Brahmanbaria after George Miah named them in his confessional statement on June 26.

"Tapping mobile phone conversations of Shafiq and Hashem, who are brothers-in-law, we came to know they were staying at the house of one of their drivers Arman at Mahikul of Rupganj in Narayanganj," Superintendent of Police (SP) Ruhul Amin of CID told The Daily Star. The police hemmed in the house around 3:00am and arrested them.

On their information police arrested Nure Alam with two German-made revolvers and 40 bullets. The CID said Shafiq and Hashem kept their firearms with Nure Alam who was a charge-sheeted accused of the Kuril firearms and grenade haul case. The court due to flawed investigation acquitted him.

In a press release yesterday, the CID said Shafiq and Nure Alam are charged-sheeted in the case accusing them of the killing of Rahmat at a hospital in Mohakhali on November 21, 2003.

In a separate drive CID arrested Shah Alam at Mahakhali in the capital for providing them shelter.

CID sources said Shafiq went to Kolkata, India with a passport under the false name of Khairul Islam on October 9 and met three other accused of the August 21 grenade attack case -- Mukul, Joy and Robin.

"Before returning on October 28, Shafiq discussed the latest development of the case and took some money from the top-notch criminals," the SP said.

The SP yesterday briefed a group of reporters on the arrest but did not allow the journalists to talk to the arrestees.

Investigation officer (IO) of the case CID Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) Abdur Rashid produced them before the court of Chief Metropolitan Magistrate, Dhaka with a 10-day remand prayer yesterday.

The IO, in the remand prayer, said the primary investigation revealed their links with the August 21 grenade attack.

The IO petitioned that the detainees need to be further quizzed during remand to find out the vital clues to the case and the whereabouts of their accomplices.

Twenty-one people have been arrested in the case so far, among them Saibal Saha Partha and 11 others were granted bail by the High Court.

The August 21 grenade attack left 22 leaders and workers of AL dead, including Ivy Rahman, and 200 others injured. Hasina narrowly escaped the attack.