Tongi chairman identifies two

Police yesterday recorded the statement of Tongi municipality chairman who witnessed the May 7 shooting and identified two local drug peddlers Kana Hafiz and Anwar Hossain Anu firing on Ahsanullah Master and others on the dais in the conference of local Shechchhasebak League.

Following the home ministry directives to submit charge sheet of Ahsanullah murder case in a month, the four-member team of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) formed to probe the killing speeded up its activities. It talked with 10 other witnesses including one Sharifuddin Akash yesterday.

Akash sustained bullet injury during the May 7 shooting.

Witnesses said over 20 gunmen were involved in the May 7 mayhem that left the AL lawmaker and a schoolboy dead and at least five others injured.

Chairman Azmat Ullah, who was standing beside Ahsanullah during the incident and escaped unscathed, said he saw about 12 youths including the two emerged from behind the stage shooting indiscriminately.

"Kana Hafiz was firing from pistols in his both hands and Anu from one," he said while talking to The Daily Star.

Hafiz, who is the fourth accused in the First Information Report(FIR), and Anu, the fifth, are members of a drugs ring allegedly led by Nurul Islam Sarker, a leader of Jubo Dal and brother of local BNP leader Hasan Sarker.

"Some eight more gunmen ran to the dais firing from the front," he said, failing to identify any of them.

"In fact,I was so shocked to find Ahsanullah Master falling on to the ground sustaining several bullets that I could not notice who were firing (running to the stage)," said Azmatullah, general secretary of AL's Gazipur unit.

Assistant Superintendent (CID) Khalequzzaman who leads the four-member CID team recorded the statement.

Azmatullah told the CID team that the killers are now threatening him for his active involvement in demanding the arrest and trial of the culprits.

"They phone repeatedly threatening to abduct and kill my children," he told this correspondent.

The slain legislator's brother Motiur Raman also told the CID team that threats kept coming from the killers.

"An unknown caller rang last night and asked me whether I wanted to live or not," Motiur said."He said I was 'doing too much' to bring them to trial."

Sources in the CID said the team was talking with the witnesses to verify the information they have already elicited from the three accused and the four suspects. The CID team is currently interrogating accused Monir and Dulal while the others remain in jail.

Giving his statement before the court Sunday, accused Mahbub confessed that he fired during the operation and said that Nurul Islam Sarker masterminded the killing a year ago.

Many Tongi locals, meanwhile, raised doubts that the other accused,still at large, might go beyond the reach of the police by the time Mahbub disclosed 'everything' to police.