Staff Correspondent:

Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan says that the killers of Jhenaidah-4 MP Anwarul Azim Anar ‘have been identified’.

“Nearly all of it has been uncovered,” he said in response to questions from reporters at the Secretariat on Thursday. “We have identified those who killed him and are very close. Now only the announcement is left.”

The announcement will be made as soon as the intelligence agencies in both countries agree to it, the home minister said.

“We are still investigating. If necessary, a team from India will come here [Bangladesh] to investigate. And, if necessary, we will send a team there too.”

The three-time MP for the Jhenaidah-4 parliamentary seat and president of the Kaliganj Upazila Awami League unit had gone to India for treatment on May 11.

He had initially been staying with his friend Gopal Biswas, a gold trader who lived in Kolkata’s Baranagar. He went missing after leaving the house.

Biswas filed a general diary at the police station over his disappearance on May 18. The GD stated that he had left the house on the afternoon of May 13 and had not returned. Investigations then began in both Bangladesh and India.

On Wednesday morning, local Indian news outlets said that MP Anar had been killed in an apartment in New Town.

Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan said afterwards that Anar had been killed in a ‘pre-meditated murder’ at the flat, but the body had yet to be found.

After receiving the news from Indian police, police in Bangladesh detained three people. The killers are believed to be in Bangladesh.

West Bengal CID IG Akhilesh Chaturvedi spoke to the media after inspecting the apartment in the Sanjeeva Gardens building in New Town on Tuesday.

“The information we have states that the last time MP Anwarul was seen, he was entering here,” the IG said. “We are not yet clear whether he had come here previously. However, we have not been able to recover his body.”

Asked how they had confirmed his killing without a body, Chaturvedi said law enforcers had some information on the matter.

A government worker named Sandeep Ray is the owner of the flat where Anar was killed, he said.

An individual named Akhtaruzzaman, a US citizen, had rented the apartment.

However, Akhtaruzzaman has yet to be detained. Dhaka police have heard that he has gone to the US from India via Nepal.

A police official involved in the investigation in Bangladesh said that Akhtaruzzaman had a home in Jhenaidah’s Kotchandpur and was known in the area as Shaheen Mia. His brother is Kotchandpur Municipal Mayor Shahiduzzaman.

West Bengal media outlets have reported, citing police sources, that Anar was strangled to death at the New Town apartment on May 13. They add that his body was then cut up and removed over the course of three days from May 16 – 18. It is not yet clear where it was moved.

On Tuesday, Home Minister Khan said that the ministry had also heard similar information. Kolkata police are working on the matter.

Anandabazar, a Bengali-language Indian newspaper, said that CCTV footage from Sanjeeva Gardens shows the MP arriving from Baranagar in a vehicle. The West Bengal CID is questioning the vehicle’s driver.

A ride-sharing vehicle was also seen in the CCTV footage leaving with several suspicious individuals on board. Anandabazar says the driver of that vehicle is also being held and questioned.