‘He was right under their nose’

On November 20 last year, two death row convict militants, Abu Siddiq Sohel and Moinul Hasan Shamim, escaped from a Dhaka court in broad daylight with help from their associates.

Of them, Shamim lived at a rented house in Gazipur for over a month this year. He even celebrated Eid-ul-Fitr with them, before vanishing once more. During his stay, he adopted the name "Rifat".

All this happened when a countrywide hunt was ongoing to catch him.

The area where he stayed falls under the jurisdiction of Kaliakoir Police Station.

An operative of banned militant outfit Ansar Al Islam, Bakhtiar Rahman alias Nazmul, 30, offered Shamim shelter as a sublet tenant in his house. The outfit had initially offered Nazmul payment for providing the shelter, but he declined, as a gesture of loyalty.

Nazmul gave a confessional statement in this regard at a Dhaka court on October 18, confirmed Deputy Commissioner SM Nazmul Haque of the Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime unit.

"We got some clue about Shamim's hideout from Nazmul's statement, and we are now analysing it to trace his current whereabouts," he told this newspaper yesterday.

During his stay in the house, Shamim never went out of the home and only used cell phones with Wifi connection. He did not use any registered SIM cards to avoid law enforcers' surveillance, according to investigators.

Meanwhile, Nazmul  joined Ansar Al Islam in 2017, said Atikul Islam, additional deputy commissioner of the CTTC unit.

Nazmul said the outfit's top leader Fahim alias Masmua Masul directed him to give shelter to Shamim in his house.

ADC Atik said the outfit has several safe houses across the country. The absconding militants are hiding in these houses in exchange for payments.

Asked about the number of safe houses, Atik said the outfit uses the cut-out strategy, meaning one cell of the group doesn't know about the other, making it difficult for law enforcers to get information.

Including the arrest of Nazmul, the total number of arrests in the militant's escape case now stands at 20. On April 18, a female operative of Ansar Al Islam Hosna gave a confessional statement in the court and admitted to giving shelter to the outfit members.