Director General of Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) Benazir Ahmed has said Rathis Bhowmik, a 55-year-old lawyer, was killed over an extramarital affair of his wife.
The RAB DG addressed a press conference over the murder in the RAB-13 Rangpur office on Wednesday, reports bdnews24.com.
Benazir Ahmed said Rathis’s schoolteacher wife Dipa Bhowmik and her colleague and lover Kamrul planned to murder Rathis two months ago.
"To execute the plan, on the night of Mar 29, they laced his dinner with sleeping pills and strangled him with a scarf," the RAB DG said.
He said the body was stuffed into an almirah on the next day and later taken to an under-construction building, half a kilometre away from Rathis’s home in Babupara.
"The body was buried into a hole dug by their two students," he said.
The building was in Tajhat Mollapara area, owned by Kamrul’s brother Khademul Islam.
“This is the story of Rathis’s death,” said Benazir Ahmed.
“The whole drama was staged by his wife and her lover Kamrul. Rathis always suspected his wife and they fought frequently over the affair,” he said.
Dipa confessed to the RAB that she had an extramarital affair with Kamrul.
The RAB has already arrested four persons—Dipa, Kamrul and their two students of Tajhat High School.
The two teenagers were paid Tk 300 each.
The RAB recovered Rathis’s body after interrogating Dipa.
Rathis was a father of two. His son is a law student of a private university in Dhaka. His younger daughter is the student of IX at Rangpur Lion’s School and College.
During the incident, his son was in Dhaka and the daughter in her relative’s house.
After autopsy, Rathis’s body was handed over to his relative.
Public Prosecutor Rathis represented the state in the cases over the killings of Japanese national Kunio Hoshi and Rahmat Ali, a caretaker of a shrine.
He was also a witness in the war crimes case against Jamaat Secretary General ATM Azharul Islam, who was sentenced to death by the International Crimes Tribunal and the Appellate Division is now hearing the case.
The legal affairs secretary of Rangpur District Awami League, Rathis was a trustee of the Hindu Welfare Trust, general secretary of Sammilita Sangskritik Jote’s Rangpur chapter, and president of the district unit of Bangladesh Puja Udjapon Parishad.
Minority groups Hindu-Buddhist-Christian Unity Council and the Puja Udjapon Parishad earlier took to the streets to demand quick steps by the authorities to trace the missing public prosecutor.