Dr Nitai Killing
His driver ‘linked to robbery’
The driver of Narayan Chandra Dutta Nitai was among those who had planned the robbery at the doctor’s Mohakhali residence in the capital on August 23, which led to Nitai’s murder, the prime suspect arrested yesterday said.
Detective Branch of police arrested Masum Mintu, 24, at a house at Badam Bagicha in Sylhet.
Mintu was then produced at a press briefing at the media and community service centre where he admitted to stabbing Nitai, assistant professor of National Institute of Diseases of the Chest and Hospital, in the chest.
Claiming that he was a professional thief, he said his associates Syed and Bakul had taken him from Kamrangirchar, where he lived, to rob with them Nitai’s house at NIDCH compound at dead of night.
Asked why they had thought of robbing Nitai’s residence, Mintu said Nitai’s driver had told them that there were around Tk 20 lakh in cash from the sale of a piece of land and about 100 tolas of gold in the house.
The driver had also assured them that they could easily get those things as only two people were staying at the house at that time, he added.
When they had broken into the first floor of the physician’s duplex quarters by cutting some window rods, he had awoken and started screaming, Mintu said.
“We became afraid of being caught by locals.”
Mintu, who has another identity as a worker at a cloths shop in Chandni Chawk Market in Dhaka, said he had stabbed Nitai first, and then did Bakul.
DB Deputy Commissioner (North) Mollah Nazrul Islam said, “We will unearth the truth once we arrest the driver, who has been hiding.”
The main killers had already been arrested, he added.
Earlier, DB men on August 25 arrested four suspected killers– Masud alias Peda, 28, Saidul, 38, Kamal, 35, and Faisal, 32, at Mohakhali and Kamrangirchar in Dhaka.
Mintu, who hails from Goyeshpur village of Mymensingh, said he had been caught by police a number of times before for thefts.
Meanwhile, Nitai’s family has been claiming that the murder was preplanned and had something to do with the recent recruitment in the hospital.
Law enforcers, however, say Nitai was stabbed when he attempted to foil the burglary attempt that night.
Courtesy of The Daily Star
