On bail, he took part in Dipan murder

Out on bail in a case filed for militancy, suspect Moinul Hasan Shamim alias Sifat took part in the killing missions of publisher Faisal Arefin Dipan and university student Riyad Morshed Babu last year, police said.

Chief of the counter terrorism unit of Dhaka Metropolitan Police, Monirul Islam, said Sifat, arrested Tuesday night, was also  involved in several other such attacks whilst on bail.

Chhatak police of Sunamganj arrested Sifat in 2010 at Gobindaganj Bazar. He was allegedly distributing leaflets of banned militant organisation Hijb-ut Tahrir and was accused in a case filed under the Anti-Terrorism Act, said Ashek Suja Mamun, officer-in-charge of Chhatak Police Station.

The same year, Sifat obtained bail from the High Court until the disposal of the case, said Superintendent of Police of Sunamganj Md Harunur Rashid.

The case is on trial and Sifat appeared before the Sessions Judge's Court of Sunamganj during its hearings, Harun told The Daily Star yesterday.

The last hearing of the case was in June. 

Sifat, 24, who had a Tk-2-lakh bounty on him, hails from Madhabpur village of Chhatak upazila in Sunamganj. Son of late Abdul Quddus, Sifat also used two other aliases -- Samir and Imran.

A team of the Detective Branch of police arrested him at Tongi on Tuesday.

Relatives and family members said Sifat was a business student at Madan Mohan College in Sylhet city and used to stay at a students' mess.

One of his six brothers said, “We have heard that he is involved in terrorism and has killed people, but we have not had any communication with him for a long time. He did not even visit us on last Eid.”

Sifat was a student in Shahjalal Jamea Islamia School and College.

Dipan, owner of Jagriti Prokashana, was hacked to death inside his office on the second floor of Aziz Cooperative Super Market in the capital's Shahbagh on October 31 while blogger Riyad Morshed Babu, a student of Shanto-Mariam University of Creative Technology in Savar, was killed in a similar fashion on January 4 last year.

According to police, the prosecution and Dhaka Chief Metropolitan Magistrate's Court, around 500 militant suspects got out on bail in the last few years.

Many of them were later arrested by law enforcers for their suspected link with terrorism and even murders.

Junnun Sikder is one such youth. His photo was among those of the 10 missing youths published by the media. Their families want to know about their whereabouts.

Junnun was arrested on August 25, 2013, along with eight other suspects.

He had then told journalists at the Detective Branch office in Dhaka that he believed in the ideologies and policies similar to Al-Qaeda's for establishing sharia law in Bangladesh.

He had said he wanted to participate in an armed jihad and go to Pakistan, Afghanistan and Syria. He would set about fulfilling his wish once he was released from jail.

Junnun along with six others were out on bail in late 2014.

All detective wings of the state are now looking for him all over again.

Recently, government ministers urged judges to be more circumspect in granting bail to militant suspects.

The Supreme Court on August 22 stayed for three months the High Court order that granted bail to Fida Muntaseer Shaker, an alleged coordinator of banned militant outfit Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT) in two cases.

2 ARRESTED AT SUST

Police, meanwhile, arrested two more students of Shahjalal University of Science and Technology (Sust) on Wednesday for their alleged involvement in militancy.

The arrestees are: Rokonuzzaman Rana, 22, a fourth-year student of petroleum and mining engineering (PME), and Mehedy Hasan Tuhin, 19, a second-year student of industrial production engineering (IPE).

Prof Rashed Taluckder, adviser of students' welfare at the university, said a team of the plainclothes law enforcers showing Rab identity cards arrested them after informing the university authorities.

Police have arrested six students of Sust in the last two months in connection with militancy.

Earlier, three fourth-year students of Sust, Abdul Aziz, Iffat Ahmed Chowdhury Nahid and Sadman Abedin, and one master's student Jewel Ahmed were arrested.

Police later said Aziz was a coordinator of militant outfit Ansarullah Bangla Team at Sust and Jewel Ahmed was an active member of Hijb-ut Tahrir.