Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan yesterday claimed the police have identified the masterminds of the Gulshan attack.

“Those who were behind the attack have been specifically identified,” he told reporters at his secretariat office in the city. He, however, did not go into any detail about the identities of the masterminds.

Meanwhile, DMP Commissioner Asaduzzaman Mia said they made a “significant progress” in the probe into the Gulshan attack case and identified the places the militants were staying and being trained.

“We are now working to bring those involved to book after reviewing the information,” he told a press conference at the media centre of Dhaka Metropolitan Police.

The DMP organised the conference on safety and security issues.

The city police chief said only five to six terrorists cannot commit such a big crime. “Terrorists were being recruited and trained. Some people instigated them; gave them shelter and arms.”

Police were trying to trace the instigators and masterminds of the attack, he added.  

Asked whether several people reportedly arrested by the Indian authorities were involved in the incident, the DMP commissioner said law enforcers did not have any such information.

The people so far found involved in the incident are Bangladeshi citizens, he said, adding that they were not ruling out involvement of any national and international quarters.

Asaduzzaman said different quarters were working to destabilise the country. “Trial of war criminals is underway. We are not ruling out any probable suspects who in the recent past created anarchy in the country in the name of movement.”

Asked if the militants were able to enter the high-security diplomatic zone and carry out the massacre due to negligence in duties by policemen, the DMP chief said only an investigation would determine whether there was any negligence on the part of cops.

On July 1, armed militants, evading some police checkpoints, swooped on Holey Artisan Bakery in Gulshan and killed 20 people -- nine Italian, seven Japanese, two Bangladeshis, an Indian and a Bangladesh-born US citizen.

The attackers also killed two police officers who tried to end the hostage-taking soon after the incident began around 8:40pm.

The 11-hour hostage crisis ended when army commandos stormed the café around 8:00am on July 2. In the operation, code-named Thunderbolt, five militants and a chef of the café were killed.

Law enforcers said the chef was a suspect, because he “helped” the terrorists. His family, however, denied the allegation.

Another café employee, detained by cops as a suspect, later died of injuries at Dhaka Medical College Hospital.   

The hostage-taking came following a spate of targeted killings of secular writers, bloggers, publishers, university teachers and religious leaders across the country over the last three years.

Global terror outfit Islamic State took credit for the Gulshan attack, but the government denied the claim, saying that home-grown militants were to blame.

MISSING PEOPLE

About the number of missing people in the capital, Asaduzzaman said he came to know that some youths “went into hiding willingly” and police were gathering information about them.

He asked people not to make any comments that would inspire militants. He called upon city dwellers to inform police about any suspects in their localities.

According to a recent report of English daily Times of India, Bangladeshi investigators were on the lookout for key JMB operative Md Suleiman in connection with the attack.

PM's International Affairs Adviser Gowher Rizvi said Bangladesh was preparing a dossier on missing youths from the country and would share the information with India to help trace them, mentioned the report.