Kolkata: A fallout between Bangladesh MP Anwarul Azim Anar and his associate and friend Md Akhtaruzzaman alias Shaheen over huge proceeds from a gold smuggling racket may have been the motive behind the former’s cold-blooded murder and subsequent gruesome disposal of the body to hide the crime.
According to intelligence officials in Bangladesh as reported by the country’s media, the MP who represents Jhenaidah-4 in Khulna division of Bangladesh and Shaheen, the younger brother of the mayor of Kotchandpur Municipality in Jhenaidah, were partners in the trans-border racket that involved smuggling gold bars into India.Nadia in Bengal borders Khulna district.
But a rift appeared between the two sometime last year when Aziz demanded a bigger cut in the pie. While Shaheen rejected the proposal then, things came to a head when he later learnt that Aziz had taken control of the entire smuggling booty estimated around Rs 80 crore. The friendship turned into deep-seated anger and hatred.
Bangladeshi police also suspect other influential people involved in the racket may have also been party to the plan to murder Azim who had taken control of the entire gold smuggling business. According to sources, Azim had staked his claim in the gold smuggling in Jhenaidah as soon as he became MP in 2014 and had gradually elbowed out a political leader from Jessore and two influential businessmen from Jhenaidah who were into the lucrative smuggled gold trade. Police are probing if they too had joined Shaheen in planning Azim’s murder.
The plan to bump Azim off was hatched between Feb and April this year. It is Shaheen who is believed to have got an execution squad together with Shimul Bhuiyan Aman alias Amanullah Syed at the helm. The others were Celesty Rahman, a woman who police suspect honey-trapped Azim into visiting the New Town apartment that Shaheen had rented on April 30; Tanvir Bhuiyan who assisted in smothering Azim to death; and Jihad Hawladar, a Bangladeshi butcher illegally working in Mumbai who had been brought in to dismember the body and dispose it off.
Shaheen is believed to have paid Tk 5 crore or around Rs 4 crore to the group to execute Azim and make him disappear from the face of the earth.
Some other names have cropped up in the investigation: Siam, Faisal Shaji and Mostafiz. But their roles are still not clear.
Bangladeshi investigators said Azim’s acquaintance and subsequent friendship with Kolkata’s Gopal Biswas was on account of the illegal gold trade. It was in Biswas’ house in Sinthi that Azim had put up on his arrival in Kolkata on May 12. Biswas, a gold trader, has denied his involvement in illegal gold transactions.
