Shibir's key man behind attacks in Rajshahi held

Abdullah Al Masum

Detectives have arrested a long-hunted leader of Islami Chhatra Shibir who allegedly planned almost all Shibir-sponsored criminal activities in Rajshahi over the last one year.
The arrestee, Abdullah Al Masum, is assistant general secretary of Shibir's Rajshahi city unit and operations commander in the city, said SM Moniruzzaman, commissioner of Rajshahi Metropolitan Police.
Masum, 22, is addicted to Phensidyl and Yaba and was caught while taking drugs at a drug den in the city on Saturday evening, Moniruzzaman told a press conference yesterday.
The arrestee is a nephew of Rajshahi Jamaat Ameer Ataur Rahman.
In the press conference, he admitted his involvement in the August 22 attack on RU BCL leader Tawhid Al Hossain Tuhin and also in last year's attack on Akheruzzaman Takim, former vice-president of RU BCL.
But he claimed some BCL men were involved in both the attacks. “Some Chhatra League men who failed to get party posts during its council in July contacted us for attacking Tuhin. They are our men infiltrated into BCL and they helped us flee from the campus after the attack."
His claim of infiltration was supported by the RMP commissioner, who said: "We got some names of BCL men from him. We have grounds to believe his statement."
BCL's RU unit President Mizanur Rahman Rana, however, dismissed the claim.
“All are just to save the real culprits. There is no Shibir infiltration into BCL," he told The Daily Star, when contacted.
In the press conference, Masum said he joined Shibir in 2007 while he was studying at Rajshahi Polytechnic Institute. Now he studies at Prime University in Dhaka.
Police say he faces 15 cases in Rajshahi and three cases in Dhaka. One case in Dhaka involves the murder of a taxi driver, Faruk Hossain, in 2011.
On July 22 that year, detectives had arrested and brought him to Dhaka but his party had managed to secure his release within a few days.
Police were again looking for him since November last year when Shibir men attacked police forces and unleashed widespread violence in Rajshahi centring on the verdict against Jamaat leader Delawar Hossain Sayedee in a war crimes case.
During the November-December violence, he hurled cocktails at police officer Mokbul Hossain, beat up sub-inspector Jahangir Hossain and a constable and snatched firearms from law enforcers, police said.
Meanwhile, Rajshahi city unit Shibir publicity secretary Asaduzzaman in an email described Masum's arrest as an "organised drama by the police" to damage Shibir's reputation.
In the email sent to some reporters, Asaduzzaman said Rajshahi Jamaat president and general secretary protested Masum's statement that Shibir and BCL men were involved in the attack on Tuhin.
He added Masum had never been Shibir's assistant publicity secretary and that he was expelled from the organisation in 2010 for violating party discipline.