Guard killed in knife attack at Dhaka airport

Security at Dhaka’s Hazrat Shahjalal International airport was beefed up yesterday following a knife attack that left a security guard dead and three other security
personnel injured.
A knife-wielding man attacked the security guard posted at the entrance to the departure lounge at the airport on Sunday night, a Dhaka Metropolitan
Police (DMP) official said.
“We are not letting anyone enter the airport to see off people,” Dhaka Tribune quoted Armed Police Battalion (APBn) Additional Superintendent of Police Tanjina Akhter as saying.
“We are trying to ensure that there is no gathering in the
canopy area,” she said.
The dead guard was identified as Sohagh Ali, 28, who is a member of Ansar, a lightly-armed volunteer paramilitary force for the preservation of internal security and law enforcement in Bangladesh.
Dhaka Metropolitan Ansar’s north zone chief Ibrahim Bhuiyan said that an injured Ansar trooper Zia has been transferred to the Combined Military Hospital, where doctors have said his condition was also critical”.
The other two injured constables, Ashik and Ishtiak, were being treated at the Kurmitola hospital.
The Dhaka Metropolitan Police official said law enforcers captured the attacker alive.
“The attacker is undergoing treatment at Dhaka Medical College Hospital. We are investigating the matter,” the official said.
The motive behind the attack is unknown yet.
The attacker was wearing a T-shirt that is the uniform of AK Traders, the company providing cleaning services at the airport. But he was not an employee of the company, reported bdnews24.com.
Killer of Indian music baron freed: Abdul Rauf Daud Merchant, the convicted killer of Indian music baron Gulshan Kumar, has been released from Dhaka Central Jail, media
reports said yesterday.
Merchant left Dhaka Central Jail in Keraniganj around 4.30pm on Sunday, Jahangir Kabir, senior jail superintendent of the prison, confirmed to The
Daily Star.
Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal did not clarify whether Merchant has been handed over to India, where he is to stand trial.
Merchant had been arrested in Brahmanbaria in 2009 for possessing a fake Bangladeshi passport. Merchant was initially kept at the Kashimpur jail in Gazipur.
He was kept at the Dhaka Central Jail since November 2014, when he was re-arrested only four days after being released on bail under section 54 of the penal code, which gives the police the right to arrest anyone under suspicion.
Merchant was sentenced to life imprisonment in India in April 2002 for shooting dead the music baron and T-Series founder Gulshan Kumar, in Mumbai on
August 12, 1997.
Merchant illegally entered Bangladesh after being released on parole in April 2009 to visit his sick mother. Since 2013, the Indian government had been pressing Bangladesh to fast-track his extradition, Dhaka Tribune reported.
On November 11 last year, Anup Chetia, leader of the Indian separatist group Ulfa, was handed over to the Indian authorities. India then returned Nur Hossain, the prime suspect in the Narayanganj seven-
murder case.