Police seek permission to exhume body

Police sought permission from a Dhaka court on Monday to exhume the body of a Japanese woman who was allegedly buried secretly in the capital's Uttara after being "murdered" a month ago.

After filing a murder case and arresting five suspects, Uttara East police sought the permission for exhumation of the body of Hiroe Miyata, 60, to conduct autopsy and ascertained the reason behind the death.

The court is set to hear the prayer tomorrow.

The incident surfaced after Kosuke Matsunaga, vice consul of the Embassy of Japan in Dhaka, filed a general diary (GD) with police on November 19.

In the GD, he mentioned that Miyata's mother Makiko Hirabayashi from Japan informed him on November 4 that she could not make any contact with her daughter by phone for a couple of days.

Police then started investigation and arrested five men -- Maruful Islam, a business partner of Miyata, and Rashidul Haque Bappi, Fakhrul Islam, Bimol Chandra Shill, and Jahangir.

Another accused, Jakir Patwari, also Miyata's business partner, is sill on the run.

A Dhaka court yesterday remanded the arrestees for four days each. According to the case, filed by Mizanur Rahman, inspector (operation) of Uttara East Police Station, their probe found that Miyata had been living in City Homes Hotel in Sector 6 for a couple of years and was abducted by her so-called business partners and their accomplices from the hotel on October 26.

The case statement added that the accused confined her to Fakrul's flat in Bashundhara residential area and asked her to bring money from her relatives for release.

At one stage, on October 29, they killed Miyata and decided to hide the body, the statement said, and later the body was taken to Maruful's Uttara residence.

They hid identity of Miyata and buried her at the city corporation-run graveyard at Sector 12 identifying her as Halima Begum, wife of late Babul Mridha of Jessore.

The statement also said that the Japanese embassy officials declined to file any case, so police did it. Yesterday, Dhaka Metropolitan Police, through a text message, convened a press conference at 11:00am on this issue but later cancelled the programme for "unavoidable reasons".

But a police officer said the briefing was cancelled on request from Japan embassy officials.

A deputy commissioner of DMP said Miyata was involved in garment business and had been living in Bangladesh for many years. Her visa expired in 2006 and since then she was staying illegally here, he added.

The arrestees claimed that they did not kill Miyata but rather took her to Bashundhara residential area as she owed the hotel huge money as rent, the officer said preferring anonymity.

Miyata died of a disease but they buried her secretly to avert problems, he said quoting the arrestees.