Cop held with seized gold

Manjurul Islam

Detectives on Monday night arrested three policemen and their source in connection with embezzling of 165 gold bars seized from smugglers in the capital's Rampura area in mid-March.
The arrestees are: Sub-Inspector (SI) Manjurul Islam and constables Wahiduzzaman and Akash Chowdhury of Rampura Police Station, and their source Rony.
Of the gold bars, 149 were recovered raiding houses of the arrestees and their relatives in Gazipur, Bogra and Narayanganj. The rest are still missing.
On March 13, a gang of smugglers had abandoned 235 gold bars in a car in Banasree area of the capital after being chased by a police team led by SI Manjurul. But the Rampura police recorded seizure of only 70 bars.

But the story began to unravel when driver of the vehicle Samir Biswas along with alleged smuggler Jahid Hossain went to Rampura Police Station to get back their abandoned car four days into the incident, said Joint Commissioner of Dhaka Metropolitan Police Monirul Islam at a briefing at DMP Media Centre yesterday.
As police arrested the duo, Samir claimed that there had been a total of 235 gold bars in the car, not only 70.
After this, police high-ups closed Officer-in-Charge (OC) Kripa Sindhu Bala and OC (investigation) Nasim Ahmed of Rampura Police Station showing no reason. But an investigation was launched which led to the arrests of the policemen and their source.
Following their confessional statement, three teams of Detective Branch of Police had recovered the gold bars, added Monirul Islam.
He said 58 of the gold bars had been recovered from the house of SI Manjurul's relative in Narayanganj, 63 from constable Wahid's house at Sonatola, Bogra, 14 from the house of constable Akash's father-in-law in Kaliakoir of Gazipur, and 14 from source Rony's possession.
"We are now looking for another police source, with whom we believe are the missing gold bars," said Monirul without disclosing the source's name.
He said the gold bars had been smuggled into Bangladesh from Dubai through Chittagong airport and brought in Dhaka to smuggle them to India through Benapole land port.
Regarding the involvement of police officials, including the two OCs, the DMP spokesperson said they were investigating and would take action if anyone was found guilty.
Meanwhile, the customs intelligence seized 62 gold bars, weighing around 7.23 kilograms, and arrested two air passengers in this connection at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport yesterday morning.
The gold bars were worth at least Tk 3.5 crore, said Director General of Customs Intelligence Moinul Khan.
He said the arrestees have been identified as Dulal Hossain and Shahidur Rahman, both from Comilla. They had landed in Dhaka from Dubai around 11:00am.