Bangladesh MP Murder: Cops Arrest Butcher, Take His Help To Locate Body Parts

The West Bengal CID arrested one person from the state's Bongaon area in North 24 Parganas district for his alleged involvement in the "murder" of Bangladesh MP Anwarul Azim Anar, an officer said on Friday.

The man, a butcher by profession, has admitted during interrogation that he had helped the other accused in chopping the victim's body before disposing the parts in different locations, the officer claimed.

Bengal Police confirmed the murder of Anar, an Awami League MP from Jhenaidah-4 segment in Bangladesh, on Wednesday after the victim went missing from Kolkata on May 13.

State CID sleuths on Friday took the arrested person to the Bhangar area where the chopped body parts were put in plastic bags and scattered across different places, he said.

"The accused is a Bangladeshi citizen and a butcher by profession. He had entered India illegally and was staying in Mumbai hiding his true identity.

"He was called to Kolkata a couple of months back as a part of the plan to kill Anar. He has admitted that he was an accomplice to the four men who murdered the politician inside the flat and helped them in skinning and chopping the body," the police officer told PTI.

The arrested accused would be produced at a court in Barasat later Friday, he said, adding that a team of CID officers were in the process of searching for the victim's body parts at the Krishnamati village in Bhangar where the butcher had led them.

An initial probe also found out that the MP's close friend Akhtaruzzaman, a US citizen, had paid around Rs 5 crore to those involved in the crime, the senior police officer said.

A team of the West Bengal CID has visited Bangladesh on Thursday to interrogate the three accused who were arrested by Bangladesh police in connection with the case.

The MP's friend has a flat in Kolkata, and is probably in the US at present, he said.

Circumstantial evidence indicated that the MP was first strangulated and killed after which his body was chopped into pieces, police claimed.

The search for the missing MP, who reportedly arrived in Kolkata on May 12 to undergo medical treatment, began after Gopal Biswas, a resident of Baranagar in north Kolkata and an acquaintance of the Bangladeshi politician, filed a complaint with the local police on May 18.

Anar had stayed at Biswas's house upon arrival.

In his complaint, Biswas stated that Anar left his Baranagar residence for a doctor's appointment in the afternoon of May 13, while stating that he would be back home for dinner.

Biswas claimed that the Bangladesh MP went incommunicado since May 17, which prompted him to file a missing complaint a day later.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)