Bangladesh to try Gulshan Kumar killer for security threat

Anisur Rahman

Dhaka, May 30 (PTI) Bollywood audio king Gulshan
Kumar's murderer, who fled to Bangladesh from India, will be
tried for posing a security threat to this country, even as
police Saturday claimed that he came here to "expand Dawood
Ibrahim's network".

Abdur Rauf alias Dawood Merchant,a professional
sharpshooter was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2002 for
killing Kumar. He escaped during a furlough from jail.

A Bangladesh court Saturday placed him and his
associate Indian national Zahid Sheikh to be remanded in
custody for eight days.

Police had asked 10 days for interrogation, three days
after their detention along with a Bangladeshi from
Brahmanbaria on an intelligence tip off. The court order came
as police said Ibrahim sent them to Bangladesh to carryout
subversive activities.

"Dawood Merchant and Zahid Sheikh were sent to
Bangladesh apparently to expand Ibrahim's underworld network
here," Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) Commissioner AKM
Shahidul Haque earlier told a crowded press conference at the
Detective Branch (DB) office.

Merchant, convicted in the 1997 murder of Indian music
baron Gulshan Kumar, and Sheikh would be tried in Bangladesh
for intrusion and obtaining passports and National ID cards
hiding their identities.

An investigation was already launched to find if more
Ibrahim men took refuge in Bangladesh.

Replying to a question, he said police would also
investigate into their suspected links with the 2004
Chittagong weapon haul in which two former National Security
Intelligence (NSI) chiefs were arrested.

They were arrested for alleged involvement in the
abortive gaggling of weapons believed to be destined to United
Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) hideouts in northeastern
India.

He said police already checked up the call lists of
Merchant's mobile phone and found around 100 phone numbers of
Bangladeshi people and discovered that he was in constant
touch with India's most wanted don Dawood Ibrahim, and another
don Chota Shakil over phone since he came to Bangladesh in
first week of May through Akhaura frontier.

Briefly talking to newsmen the two Indian underworld
operatives claimed they took refuge in Bangladesh only to
evade "encounter" with police there and they did not have
plans to expand their network.

"I have links with Chota Shakil, not Dawood Ibrahim,"
Merchant said. PTI