Daud Merchant walks out of jail

Abdur Rauf Daud Merchant, an Indian fugitive criminal, walked out of jail on Sunday, three days after a Dhaka court cleared him of charges of suspicious movement.

Daud, a suspected associate of underworld don Daud Ibrahim, went out of Dhaka Central Jail in Keraniganj around 4:30pm that day, Jahangir Kabir, senior jail superintendent of the prison, told The Daily Star.

He was released following all the legal procedures, Jahangir said.

It could not be immediately known where Daud went after his release.

Meanwhile, talking to reporters at his secretariat office yesterday, Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan said Daud Merchant was released as per the rules as he completed his jail term.

“He [Daud] is a free man now… It is up to him whether he will go to India or stay in Bangladesh,” he said, adding, “We have not assisted in pushing back or pushing in anyone.”

In January, the home minister said an initiative had been taken for Daud's repatriation. However, the criminal had been in jail since then.

“There are some foreign nationals in Bangladesh jails who have served their sentences. We are contacting the embassies concerned to send them back,” the minister had said.

Daud Merchant, a convicted killer of Indian music baron Gulshan Kumar, was arrested in Brahmanbaria in 2009 for intruding into Bangladesh.

He was arrested along with another Indian national, Mohammad Zahid. Daud had been hiding in the district in guise of a Bangladeshi citizen for around a month.

He also had managed a Bangladeshi passport from a broker where his name was mentioned as Shomr Patel. During his arrest, police seized his driving license and the passport.

Earlier in December, 2014, he had obtained bail in another case and was released from Kashimpur Central Jail in Gazipur. He, however, was rearrested outside the jail.

He was then produced before a Dhaka court and it placed him on a three-day remand in a case filed under section 54 of the Code of Criminal Procedure for his suspicious movement in Bangladesh. He had been in jail since this Sunday.

Daud has a wife, a son, a daughter and a brother in Mumbai, India.