The suspect killed by commandos after the hijacking of a Biman Bangladesh Airlines flight has been identified as Palash Ahmed alias Mahadi, who had been in jail for 20 days after being released on bail on charges of abducting a teenage girl in 2012, says the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB).

“We have gone through his prior records,” RAB spokesperson Mufti Mahmud Khan said on Monday (Feb 25).

The purported hijacker’s identity was confirmed after RAB ran his fingerprints through its criminal database, according to him.

The flight manifest of BG 147 shows that Mahadi’s ticket was registered as AHMED/MD Palash as well.

Palash, who hailed from a village in Narayanganj’s Sonargaon Upazila. His peers and family called him Palash but outside the village he was known as Mahadi.

According to sources in RAB, one Delwar started a case against Palash on Feb 22 in 2012 on charges of abducting a 17-year-old girl, who was rescued a little over a month later, on Mar 24.

A RAB official said that the teenager’s family alleged that Palash and his accomplice, who was also arrested, demanded Tk 800,000 as ransom.

Meanwhile, Palash’s father Piyar Jahan Sarder said that he was in a relationship with the girl and her family pressed charges because they disapproved of it.

“He was in jail for 20 days before being released on bail,” Naraynganj resident Sarder told Bangla Tribune on Monday.

“My son told me on Friday (Feb 22) that he was leaving for Dubai and wanted 500 dirhams,” Sarder said.

He added that he arranged the money although Palash had several times wasted money for going abroad.

“Ten months ago, he came to my home with actor Simla,” he said, adding he didn’t know at the time that they were married.

“We later came to know that they were married and a couple of months later he came home with her and told us about their marriage,” he said.

Sarder said that they were unhappy with the marriage but later accepted it.

“He had gotten married once before in Bogura and had a child from that marriage,” he said and added that Palash and his first wife were divorced.

Describing his son as unruly, Sarder said Palash dropped out from the Sonargaon Degree College, where he had enrolled for Higher Secondary Certificate (HSC) exams.

He was the youngest amongst four children, Sarder said and added Palash continued his unruly ways well into adulthood and that they were not on speaking terms.

 “A Sonargaon police team visited my home around 1am on Monday, and searched my home. The police left us alone after that,” he said.

On Sunday night, Palash was killed in the commando raid at Chattogram’s Shah Amanat Airport after he tried to ‘hijack’ Biman Bangladesh’s BG-147 flight.

The Dubai-bound flight with a stopover at Chattogram left Dhaka at 5:05pm, carrying 134 passengers and 14 crew members.

The crew and passengers were evacuated safely from the aircraft before the security operation was conducted against the suspect.

Bangla Tribune’s Narayanganj Correspondent Amir Hossain Smith provided inputs for this report