Underworld dons pull strings

Teenaged gangsters execute their plans in city
More than a dozen hardened criminals, wanted by police for years, are in command of the city’s underworld either from jail or hideouts in India through an organised network of junior accomplices with strong political links.
Intelligence sources have found links of the top listed criminals, self-exiled or jailed, with the latest wave of criminal activities like murder, extortion, abduction and drug-peddling. These well-orchestrated criminal activities are committed by several hundred teenaged gangsters groomed in Dhaka.
The Dhaka Metropolitan Police prepared a list of 23 most-wanted criminals in 2001 and announced bounty for capturing them. Some of them were killed in ‘crossfire’ and lynched, while a few others landed in jail.
But most of the listed criminals escaped encounters with law enforcers and managed to flee the country, still keeping their control over the city’s gangland.
After a long hibernation during 2007-2008 emergency rules, they started raising their ugly heads again with the return of political government to power in January 2009.
The jailed criminals meet their followers on court premises while self-exiled dons keep in constant touch with their men over cellular phones.
Dhaka Metropolitan Police sources said the city’s underworld has got more than 1,200 teenaged recruits who are carrying out criminal activities in the capital city almost without any virtual resistance, as law enforcers often fail to keep track of the new entrants.
These unnoticed criminals aged between 15 and 25 years have already made their presence and might known to police carrying out a series of murders, extortion and robberies upon orders from their bosses, who are in jail or in Indian cities like Kolkata.
Police and Rapid Action Battalion, stunned and fooled by the severity of the latest spate of criminal activities, have conducted several raids in the capital, but have seen little success so far.
Investigation of Dhaka’s crime world reveals that hundreds of new faces have turned up in each area of the city over the last couple of years and formed numerous groups and subgroups.
Youngsters easily filled in the gaps as a good number of listed criminals were killed in ‘encounters’ with the RAB since June 2004 and the rest fled to India, leaving the underworld almost empty.
Investigators say the city is now in the grip of junior criminals, most of whom have already established links with the two major political parties. Those who were isolated have sought the patronage of local political bosses, who have crime and corruption records, for shelter and protection.
The June 26 gruesome broad daylight killing of three businessmen at the city’s major wholesale kitchen market of Karwanbazar stunned the city people and the police as well.
 Police arrested 10 suspects in this connection conducting raids at different places and seized firearms and micro-bus believed to have been used in the killing.
Police got clues that the gun attack was directed by criminal kingpin Ashiq, who is now staying in India.
Dhaka Metropolitan Police Commissioner AKM Shahidul Haque told the media on July 4 that collecting extortion and establishing supremacy led to the murders at Karwanbazar.
The arrested told the police that Sohel had planned the whole operation.
Sohel said all of them are the members of the same gang led by Ashiq, who assigned them to kill Faruq.
In another incident, armed assailants shot dead one and injured seven others in broad daylight at an under-construction Market at Mirpur-1 on July 13.
Law enforcers and injured people believed that the gun attack was carried out by the followers of most-wanted criminals Shahadat and Khorshed, and it was a result of long rivalry with Anowar Hossain Litu, a leader of pro-Awami League student organisation, Bangladesh Chhatra League.
Intelligence sources said apart from hardened criminals like Subrata, Joy, Molla Masud, Haris, Prakash, Imam, Aga Shamim, Kochi and Manik, the city’s underworld has got criminals like Changa Babu and Nabir Hossain Nabi of Mohammadpur, Mobile Kader of Mirpur, Laren, Reaz, Gandha Jahangir, Tajgir, Ekhtiar of Motijheel, Dakat Shahid of old town, Rony, Mukul, Jishan of Moghbazar, Shahadat-Khorshed of Mirpur.
All major crimes are linked with one or more of these gangsters and their men.
DMP commissioner AKM Shahidul Haque told New Age, ‘The arrested criminals confessed that they carried out the murders directed by their kingpins or top bosses. But we can’t take any legal action against the masterminds, as they are either in jail or in neighbouring country.’
At the bi-annual meeting in Dhaka on July 14, director generals of Bangladesh Rifles and Border Security Force of India agreed to exchange lists of criminals believed to be hiding in their respective countries. The BDR chief had handed over to his counterpart a list of 1,227 Bangladeshi criminals and received a list of 77 people from the Indian side.

Courtesy of NewAgebd