Jhenaidah-4 lawmaker Anwarul Azim Anar had been targeted for murder twice before, Detective Branch (DB) of Police Chief Harun-or-Rashid said on Saturday.
“Anar’s murder was planned in the country before the last national election and again in January this year,” Harun-or-Rashid told reporters at his office on Minto Road in Dhaka on Saturday.
He said the lawmaker was eventually killed in Kolkata in a third plot after the previous two attempts failed.
Harun-or-Rashid said a DB team under his leadership will visit Kolkata to scrutinize and verify the information gathered so far about the murder.
"The murderers had also considered keeping Anar alive for two days to extort money through blackmail. However, they abandoned this plan as the lawmaker could not regain consciousness due to excessive anesthetic application," said the DB chief.
Harun noted that following the murder, those involved took the MP's mobile phone to various locations in an attempt to mislead investigators.
Anar’s daughter Mumtarin Ferdous Doreen, filed an abduction case with the Sher-e-Bangla Nagar Police Station on 22 May. A murder case has also been filed in Kolkata.
Four members of the Kolkata Police came to Bangladesh to investigate the matter. The investigation is ongoing, and they will interview the accused again today.
MP Anar, who went missing in Kolkata on 13 May, was murdered in Kolkata and three people have been arrested in this regard in Bangladesh.
West Bengal CID said they have arrested two suspects in connection with the murder.
One of the arrestees, Jihad Hawladar, 24, is a professional butcher and was arrested from Mumbai.
West Bengal CID has found blood stains inside the apartment of the luxury condominium in New Town on Kolkata’s outskirts, where the MP’s whereabouts were last traced on 13 May.
They also recovered several plastic bags, which they believe were used to dump the body parts.
According to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of West Bengal Police, MP Anar’s body was minced to hide all traces of the murder.
During interrogation, the people arrested in connection with the murder told police it was carried out on the orders of Akhtaruzzaman Shaheen, a Bangladeshi-US citizen who has been a childhood friend and business partner of the MP.
On Akhtaruzzaman’s order, MP Anar was lured into the New Town flat, and then smothered with a pillow to kill him.
Following the murder, the body was chopped and then minced to get rid of all evidence.
The brutal killing of MP Anwarul Azim is suspected to be due to a dispute over the sharing of gold smuggling proceeds.
According to police, Aktaruzzaman Shaheen himself is a gold smuggler and MP Anwarul Azim Anar was allegedly involved with it.
Shaheen and Azim have a joint business in Kolkata.
