Man held by Kolkata cops may be Bangladeshi blogger’s killer | India News

BENGALURU/KOLKATA: A man arrested by Kolkata Police’s special task force from Bengaluru in a fake currency case is suspected to be the fugitive Bangladeshi terrorist Faisal Ahmed, convicted in absentia this March for masterminding the 2015 murder of science blogger Ananta Bijoy Das in that country.
A senior official in Kolkata said the police were seeking inputs from multiple security agencies on the arrested man, who had been living and working in Bengaluru as Saheb Mazumdar alias Shahid Mazumdar. Bengaluru Police assisted the visiting task force team in raiding the suspect’s rented house at Garvebavipalya in Bommanahalli on July 1.
Shahid, who carried an ID card showing his address as Cachar in Assam’s Barak Valley and a voter card from another state, was employed in a garments factory in Bengaluru and moonlighted as a taxi driver. He rented the Bommanahalli house in June last year, his landlord said.
“We’ve received queries from various quarters regarding the antecedents of the accused. The focus is on verifying if he is indeed the wanted terrorist linked to a series of fatal attacks on Bangladeshi bloggers seven years ago,” said a senior task force official in Kolkata. Joint commissioner of police (STF) V Solomon Nesakumar said he carried a driving licence issued in Bengaluru.
“After recording the facts of the case, the task force took him to Kolkata,” an official said. It couldn’t be immediately confirmed if a request from Bangladesh led the task force to hunt for Shahid.
A group of masked youths in Bangladesh, including fugitive Faisal, murdered 32-year-old blogger Das, who was the general secretary of the Biggan and Juktibadi Council, near his home in Sylhet on May 12, 2015.
Faisal, a medical student then, carried out the killing after becoming involved with al-Qaida’s shadow outfit Ansarullah Bangla Team, Bangladesh media reported.