Harris among 9 new accused

Harris Chowdhury, former premier Khaleda Zia's political secretary, and Sylhet Mayor Ariful Haque Chowdhury have been charged with the 2005 murder of former finance minister SAMS Kibria.

The two are among the nine named in the third charge sheet submitted by the CID to Habiganj District and Sessions Judge's Court yesterday.

The rest are district BNP General Secretary GK Gaus and Huji members Hafez Yahiya, Abu Bakar Md Karim, Delwar Hossain, Sheikh Farid, Abdul Jalil and Abdus Salam.

With them, the number of charge-sheeted accused in the case has now risen to 35 from 10 in the original charge sheet.  

SAMS Kibria, then an opposition lawmaker, was assassinated in a grenade attack while addressing a rally in Habiganj on January 27, 2005. The blast also killed Kibria's nephew Shah Manzur Huda, local Awami League leader Abdur Rahim and two others.

Kibria's son Dr Reza Kibria expressed his dissatisfaction as the then Habiganj deputy commissioner was yet to be charge-sheeted.

"We want to know his [the DC's] role during and after the attack. We think his name should be in the charge sheet," he said over the phone.

Reza also said no investigating officer contacted them in the last one year. "We don't know in what manner the investigation is going on. In the last 10 years, people related to the investigation contacted us only four or five times."

The family would come up with its formal statement on November 20, he added.

Contacted, BNP Joint Secretary General Rizvi Ahmed said the party might make comments after going through the charge sheet.

Ariful Haque, mayor of Sylhet City Corporation, said inclusion of his name in the charge sheet is a conspiracy.

"I was stunned. No one involved in the investigation asked me anything. A vested quarter might have been envious of my win in mayoral polls," he told The Daily Star over the phone.

The day after the grenade attack, Abdul Mazid Khan, organising secretary of Habiganj district AL, filed two cases -- one for murder and the other under the Explosive Substances Act -- with Habiganj Sadar Police Station.

Munshi Atiqur Rahman of the CID, the investigation officer, submitted the first charge sheet on March 20, 2005 against 10 local BNP men.

The family outright rejected it saying the investigation failed to detect the masterminds.

Sylhet Divisional Speedy Trial Tribunal Judge Biplab Goswami accepted the charge sheet but couldn't start the trial as the complainant filed a no-confidence petition.

As the tribunal rejected the petition, the complainant sought time for lodging a petition with the High Court for a stay on the proceedings. And the tribunal granted the petitioner 10 days.

Upon an appeal by the complainant, the HC on May 5, 2006 stayed the proceedings. Following another appeal, the Sylhet tribunal on May 14, 2006 ordered further probe into the cases.

Reinvestigation began after the AL came to power in 2009.

The new IO, Rafiqul Islam, submitted the second charge sheet to a Habiganj magistrate's court on June 20, 2011.

This time Lutfozzaman Babar, state minister for home of the BNP government at the time of the murder, and Mufti Abdul Hannan, chief of banned militant outfit Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (Huji), and 14 others were named.

The CID found involvement of Babar in the killing plot executed by the Huji militants. The ex-state minister and the Huji chief are now behind bars and facing trials in some other criminal cases.

A week after the second charge sheet submission, Kibria's wife Asma Kibria filed a petition with a Habiganj court expressing no confidence in the investigation. The court then forwarded the case documents and the petition to the Sylhet Divisional Speedy Trial Tribunal.

Following two petitions by Asma and the tribunal prosecutor, tribunal Judge Dilip Kumar Debnath on January 5, 2012 ordered the CID to carry out further probe by a senior officer who yesterday submitted the supplementary charge sheet.