BNP man, neighbour on 10-day remand

A Rangpur court yesterday placed two people on 10 days' remand over the murder of Japanese citizen Kunio Hoshi, with cops claiming to have made a “major breakthrough” in the case.    

The two are Rashed-un-Nabi Khan Biplob, a local BNP man, and Humayun Kabir Hira, a friend of Hoshi who was shot to death by unidentified gunmen on Saturday morning in the district.    

The Senior Judicial Magistrate's Court of Abu Taleb gave the remand order after police produced them before his court.

“We sought the court's permission to take the suspects on remand upon our findings that they have involvement in the murder,” said Rezaul Karim, officer-in-charge of Kaunia Police Station.

But he declined to say how they were involved.

Hira is one of the four people police admitted to have picked up for “questioning” soon after the murder. The next day, one detainee, Zakaria Bala, owner of the house where Hoshi was a tenant, was admitted to a hospital with “chest pain”. 

Cops kept the three others, including Hira, in their custody, repeatedly insisting that none of them were suspects.

On Monday, Hira's family members claimed that police were torturing him to extract a confessional statement.

Police would not make any comment in this regard either.

Biplob was allegedly picked up along with another BNP man, Anisur Rahman Lacku, on Saturday afternoon by plainclothes police and Rab members, something officials of both the agencies repeatedly denied.

Until yesterday, police, detectives and Rab maintained that they had no information regarding the arrests of Biplob, a member of Rangpur BNP, and Lacku, an assistant organising secretary of pro-BNP youth wing Jubo Dal's central unit.

Lacku's wife yesterday said law enforcers handed her husband over to Joypurhat police for “possessing yaba tablets”.

Asked, OC Rezaul Karim yesterday refused to say anything about how Biplob ended up in their hands or why cops now considered Hira as a suspect.

Locals said Hira was a close friend of Kunio Hoshi, 66, who used to go to his grass farm at Alutari village riding on Hira's motorbike often. Hira himself owns a fishery in the same area.

People in Hira's neighborhood Robertsonganj said he was never in politics and fishery was his family business, third generation running.

Hira is one of those who took Hoshi to Rangpur Medical College Hospital. Police arrested him from there.

On Monday night, his wife Sultana Khatun alleged that her husband's face was swollen beyond recognition from torture.

“Please do something for us. What kind of country do we live in? Where is justice?” she told The Daily Star over the phone yesterday, after coming to know that police took her husband on remand.

Plainclothes police also detained her father Zafar Ali yesterday afternoon, but later freed him.

Police had been tightlipped all along since the murder, even restricting journalists' movement, especially while visiting family members of the four detainees.

The two others are Monnaf Ali, on whose rickshaw Kunio Hoshi was riding when shot thrice, and Murad Hossain, a local. Both of them are still in police custody. Reportedly, police are trying to make them witnesses.  

Asked about the detention yesterday, one police officer said on condition of anonymity, “We call it detention for questioning until they confess to the crime. This is how we work … The same is true about those who go missing after being picked up by our plainclothes colleagues. We recognise their arrest once they confess to a crime. Or else, their fate is uncertain.”