Noted journalist Minar Mahmud, editor of weekly Bichinta, was found dead at a residential hotel in the capital yesterday.
The cause of his death could not be known immediately but police recovered empty strips of 150 sedative tablets, Rivotril, and a letter along with the body in the sixth-floor room of the hotel.
“The five-page letter was addressed to his [Minar’s] wife Lajuk,” Shamim Hossain, officer-in-charge of Khilkhet Police Station, said. “In the letter, he wrote nobody was responsible for his death.”
“Minar also mentioned in the letter that he was going to commit suicide as the weekly Bichinta failed to make any headway,” Khandaker Lutful Kabir, deputy commissioner police (Gulshan division), said.
Bichinta was a popular news magazine in the 80s.
The newsman resigned from another weekly, Prottasha, on Wednesday, Kabir said citing the letter.
On receiving information from the Regency Hotel authorities, police recovered the body around 5:00pm, OC Shamim Hossain said. Minar checked in at the hotel on Wednesday morning.
The 53-year-old journalist recently returned home from self-exile in the US, family sources said. He went out of his house at Uttara Wednesday around 9:00am.
Police sent the body to Dhaka Medical College Hospital morgue for autopsy.
-With The Daily Star input
