Three suspected militants, including the Gulshan café terror attack mastermind Tamim Ahmed Chowdhury, were killed during a joint forces’ raid at Paikpara in Narayanganj yesterday. Police said before going ahead with Operation ‘Hit Strong 27’, they had asked the militants to surrender. The militants’ den was on the third floor of a three-storey building next to Boro Kabarsthan at Paikpara in Narayanganj, some 25km south of Dhaka. The operation was launched around 6.30am. Tamim was a Bangladeshi-born Canadian citizen. The two other slain militants could not be identified immediately. Their fingerprints have been collected to find out who they were. “The face of one of the three slain militants is similar to that of Tamim. It is quite clear that he is Tamim,” said inspector general of police (IG) AKM Shahidul Hoque, who visited the spot. Tamim had been on the police’s most-wanted list since the Holey Artisan Bakery terror attack. The DMP had announced a bounty of Tk 20 lakh for any information on him. Home minister Asaduzzaman Khan also visited the spot yesterday. “The militants were asked to surrender but they did not respond and rather started firing. Police and SWAT forces showed much patience and opened fire only later,” he said.
“The chapter of Tamim Chowdhury has been closed with his death. We will find out the remaining militants soon,” he added.
Sources in the Counter-Terrorism and Transnational Crime (CTTC) unit of Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) said that after getting information about the militants, they started the preparations around 2.30am and reached the spot at 6.30am.
Police first cordoned off the area and evacuated the other occupants of the building, which is called ‘Dewan Bari’, after its owner Nuruddin Dewan. Later, RAB and other forces joined the operation. IG Shahidul Hoque said the militants were already in a mood to attack. “I instructed the forces to try to talk to the militants. The suspects were told to open the door and raise their hands. But they did not take the opportunity to surrender. Rather, they hurled four or five grenades and opened fire on the police. Our men were forced to launch their action,” he said.
Additional deputy commissioner of the CTTC’s Bomb Disposal Unit, Md Sanwar Hossain, said, “Until 8.30am, we asked the militants to surrender. Our target was to arrest them alive.” According to him, the militants instead used the time to destroy all the documents, mobile phones, and laptops before attacking the forces. The CTTC team completed the hour-long operation around 9.30am and entered the building. They found the bodies of two militants lying next to the main door. Chowdhury’s body was found in another room. Two live grenades, an AK-22 rifle, a pistol, several knives, a few broken mobile phones, and laptops were found in the apartment. Sanwar Hossain said five people had rented the apartment two months ago. Two of them had identified themselves as pharmaceutical company employees and one posed as a banker. “We have taken the fingerprints of the militants to match these with the NID cards,” he added.
CTTC chief Monirul Islam said they had got the information about the Paikpara hideout from an arrested JMB member. “We had got the information from our intelligence sources that Tamim was staying in the apartment. Based on that, the DMP city unit, the SWAT team and others joined the operation,” he added. Police said Tamim had stayed a few days at the Kolyanpur hideout where nine militants were killed in a previous operation. After that, he rented this apartment. Ten persons living in Dewan Bari, including a woman, were taken to Dhaka for interrogation. The building has been locked and police are keeping a watch on it. Meanwhile, several images of the bodies of Tamim Chowdhury and his two aides who were killed in the Narayanganj raid surfaced hours after the operation.