Schoolboy murder: 2 held in Ctg
Saiful Islam, left, and Ruhul Amin Raju, right, were arrested on Monday night on charge of murdering schoolboy Ashraf Hossain Babu, inset. Photo: Star
Two 22 year olds were arrested Monday night on charges of kidnaping and murdering a schoolboy in May this year in the port city. The kidnappers continued to demand ransom, four months after murdering the victim, which was revealed when police arrested the criminals on Monday night. The arrestees are Saiful Islam, 22, and Ruhul Amin Raju, 22. The victim was identified as Ashraf Hossain Babu, 16, the only son of Asgar Hossain, proprietor of Jan Optical Company located at the city's Laldighi area. A joint team of Rapid Action Battalion (Rab), Chittagong Metropolitan Police (CMP) Detective Branch (DB) and Halishahar Police Station, after relentless attempts, arrested Saiful from in front of Agrabad Women's College. Acting on confessions made by Saiful, the law enforcers arrested Raju from MA Aziz Stadium area the same night. Sources said Babu went missing on May 16 at around 7:00pm on his way back home at Kotowali after he left his aunt's residence at Block-A, Halishahar. A person rang up Asgar over cell phone at around 9:30pm on the same night, telling him that his son has been held hostage and demanded Tk 20 lakh as ransom. “The same person phoned me again the next morning at around 10:30am and since then I found the cell phone switched off,” said Asgar. He added that he filed a case with Halishahar Police Station when Babu did not return home within two or three days. Saiful, while talking to reporters at DB office yesterday, confessed to the kidnapping. He said he knew Babu as Asgar was a friend of his father Shafiqul Islam, a wholesaler of spectacles. Saiful said he requested Babu over cell phone to come to Dewanhat intersection from where he and his friend, Raju, met the boy. The two took Babu to an apartment on the ground floor of a five storey building, Sarkar Mansion, at Rangipara under Halishahar. Saiful lived on the fourth floor while Raju had recently rented the ground floor of the apartment as part of the plan to keep Babu hostage there, he added. He said, once at the apartment, they tied Babu's eyes and hands and gave him soft drinks mixed with eight sleeping pills to drink and went out. They went to the apartment the next morning at around 11:00am and found Babu dead, he added. They put Babu's body in a paper carton, took it to Oxygen-Quaish road on a CNG-run auto rickshaw and dropped it on a roadside ditch on May 18, Saiful said. According to police and Babu's family members, Saiful again phoned Asgar on August 17 and demanded payment of the ransom if he wanted to celebrate Eid-ul-Fitr with his son. Saiful phoned Asgar several times in the last couple of weeks and fixed the ransom at Tk 2 lakh. Asgar went to three places of Sadarghat, Lucky Plaza and Agrabad CDA residential area with the money on Monday evening according to Saiful's directions before the law enforcers, who were tracing Asgar, could arrest Saiful. Additional Superintendent of Police (ASP) of Rab 7 Saidul Hasan said they faced problems in tracking Saiful by his mobile phone since he used two sim (Subscriber Identity Module) cards.
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