Dipan

Two years have passed since the killing of publisher Faisal Arefin Dipan and the hacking of another publisher Ahmedur Rashid Tutul and two others, but investigators still cannot say for sure when they will be able to submit charge sheets in the cases.

Officials of the Detective Branch of police investigating the cases said they already identified the mastermind and most of the suspects and found out the motive.

Law enforcers have arrested three suspects -- Abdus Sabur, a leader of banned militant outfit Ansar al-Islam, and alleged members of the outfit Moinul Hasan Shamim alias Sifat and Sumon Hossain Patwari -- who have confessed to the crimes.

Investigators said they would submit charge sheets in the two cases after the arrest of the mastermind and most of the suspects.

Sabur admitted his involvement in the attacks on Dipan, Tutul and his two friends. Moinul said he was involved in the Dipan murder, while Sumon confessed that he was involved in the attack that left Tutul and his friends injured, detectives said, quoting their confessional statements.

Another suspect in the two attacks, Shariful Islam alias Saleh alias Arif, was killed in a “gunfight” with detectives on June 19 last year.

According to the investigators, sacked and absconding army officer, Maj Ziaul Haque is the mastermind behind the attacks on Dipan and Tutul and his friends. He is allegedly the military commander of Ansar al-Islam.

On October 31 in 2015, in what appeared to be synchronised attacks on publishers of secularist authors, Dipan of Jagriti Prakashani was murdered at his office in the capital's Shahbagh.

Just hours before the attack, Tutul and his blogger friends Ranadipam Basu and Tareque Rahim were injured in a machete attack at Tutul's publishing house Shuddhoswar in Lalmatia.

DB Assistant Commissioner Fazlur Rahman, who is supervising Dipan murder case investigation, on Sunday said in the arrestees' confessional statements, seven to eight more names of attackers and their trainers came up.

“We are now hunting them. Once we arrest most of them, we'll submit the charge sheet,” he told The Daily Star.

Rajib Al Masud, additional deputy commissioner of DB, who is monitoring the probe into the attack on Tutul and his friends, said a number of suspects, whose names appeared in the confessional statements of two arrestees (Sabur and Sumon), were still on the run. 

Detectives said Ansar al-Islam perpetrated both the attacks.

Ansar al-Islam, said to be the Bangladesh branch of al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), carried out targeted attacks on secular writers, bloggers, publishers, freethinkers and gay rights activists between 2013 and 2016. 

In its last attack on April 25 last year, the outfit killed LGBT activists Xulhaz Mannan and his friend Mahbub Tonoy inside Xulhaz's flat in Kalabagan.

Both Tutul and Dipan were publishers of freethinking online activist writer-blogger Avijit Roy, who was hacked to death by machete-wielding assailants of the outfit in TSC area on February 26, 2015.

Quoting the three arrestees' confessional statements, detectives said 19 Ansar al-Islam operatives recruited from different parts of the country took training on firearms and machetes at a hideout in Tongi. 

Later, 10 of them divided in two groups -- five in each -- carried out the attacks on Dipan, Tutul and the two others the same day. Alongside machetes, they carried firearms with them.

The sacked major, Ziaul, known in the organisation as Ishtiaq, used to visit the den of those militants and train them, according to detectives.

Talking to this correspondent on Sunday, Dipan's wife Razia Rahman said, "When we wanted to know about the progress of Dipan murder case, investigators used to say if we wanted they could submit the charge sheet, but if they did so, the investigation would come to an end."

The investigators also said the mastermind of her husband's murder was still at large, she added.