Police have pressed charges against eight members of banned militant outfit Ansar Al Islam aka Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT) in connection with the murder of publisher Faisal Arefin Dipan.
Assistant Commissioner of Detective Branch (DB) Fazlur Rahman, also the investigating officer of the case, submitted the charge sheet to the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate’s Court in Dhaka on Thursday (Nov 15).
The court also set Dec 18 to hear the charges.
Six of the eight suspects are behind bars. They are -- Moinul Hasan Shamim alias Samir alias Imran, trainer Abdus Sabur alias Samad alias Sujon alias Raju, top ABT operatives Khairul Islam alias Fahim alias Jishan, Sheikh Abdullah, Abu Siddiq Sohel, and Mozammel Hossain alias Saimon.
They also confessed their involvement in the Dipan murder before the court.
On Oct 31 2015, publisher Dipan was found dead in a pool of blood, hacked to death in his Jagriti Prokashony office at Shahbagh's Aziz Super Market in Dhaka.
Prior to Dipan’s murder on the same day, Ahmedur Rashid Tutul, owner of Suddhaswar, another publishing house, and the secular writers Tarek Rahim and Ranadipam Basu faced a vicious attack at Tutul's Lalmatia office.
The three, however, survived the attack with critical injuries.
Both Tutul and Dipan had published books by the secular writer-blogger Avijit Roy, who was hacked to death in February the same year in front of the Teacher Student Centre (TSC) on the Dhaka University campus.
A day after Dipan murder, his wife Razia Rahman Joly filed a case with Shahbag police station on Nov 1, 2015.