Brac employee murdered in Nilphamari

Police arrested two employees of a building material store yesterday morning on suspicion of hacking a Brac employee to death in Kazirhat area of Nilphamari town Tuesday afternoon.

Police recovered the body of Mahidul Islam, 45, of Naogaon’s Manda upazila, from his rented room after locals noticed a stream of blood coming out of the door, said Sub-inspector Mintu Chhandra Banik of Nilphamari Sadar Police Station.

The arrestees, Moinul Islam, 25, and Faruk Hossain, 26, are also suspected of stealing Tk 8 lakh from the building material store by breaking into a locker, said Mintu who is investigating the case.

The suspects are being interrogated and the “investigators have made significant progress”, he added.

Mahidul, who worked in the microcredit programme of Brac, used to live alone in a rented room behind the building material               store.

His wife and children live in Rangpur’s Taraganj, where she teaches in a school, police said.

Owner of the building material store, Isahaq Ali Shohag, 47, told this correspondent that he kept Tk 8 lakh inside the locker of his shop earlier that day and went home for lunch, closing the store.

He returned in the afternoon and found that “somebody broke into the store and stole the cash along with the computer and CCTV cameras”. 

Shohag and a few locals then went behind the store and found that the door of Mahidul’s room was locked from outside and a steam of blood was coming from under the door.

Informed by locals, police officers went to the scene and broke into the room and found the body of the victim. They sent the body to a hospital for autopsy.

Ruhul Amin, additional superintendent of police in Nilphamari, said the Brac employee may have been killed after he witnessed the robbery at the store.

Mahidul’s brother-in-law filed a case later that day.

A special police team along with Rab and CID officials is investigating the case, he added.