NEW DELHI: A Bangladeshi ruling party member of parliament (MP) who arrived in India for medical treatment was murdered in the West Bengal state capital Kolkata.
Anwarul Azim Anar, 56, a three-term MP travelled to India on May 12 and went missing the following day, according to a Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha (BSS) news agency report on Wednesday.
The Awami League politician represented a constituency in the Jhenaidah border district.
The Indian police have recovered Anar’s body from an apartment in Kolkata’s New Town area, BSS reported.
“So far, we have come to know that all the people involved in the killing are Bangladeshis. It was a planned murder,“ Bangladesh Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan was quoted as saying in the report.
“We have received some information which cannot be divulged right now,“ Akhilesh Chaturvedi, a senior police officer in West Bengal, said in a report by the Kolkata-based Telegraph newspaper.
“The forensics and fingerprint experts are combing the flat,“ Chaturvedi said.
Anar had many friends in India and one of them was Gopal Biswas, a gold trader, at whose residence the Bangladeshi MP stayed before he went missing, the Telegraph reported.
Anar went out to see a doctor on May 13 but never returned.
In one WhatsApp message he told Biswas that he was going to Delhi, according to the Indian and Bangladeshi media reports.
In another message the MP told Biswas that he was with “VIPs” and there was no need to contact him.
The message was also forwarded to Anar’s personal assistant Abdur Rauf.
The MP was in touch with his family and party members on the first two days of his trip but became unreachable on May 14, Abdur Rauf told Bangladeshi media.
Besides being a politician, Anar also had several business interests.
Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina expressed her shock and grief over the death of her party politician.
Mumtarin Ferdoush Dorin, the MP’s daughter, has filed a police case.
“We want a fair investigation of who killed him and why. I want to see it to the end. I want to see those who killed my father hanged,“ she said.
