India ready to extradite Nur Hossain: Foreign Minister

New Delhi has agreed to send back the prime suspect of the Naryanganj multiple murders Nur Hossain, foreign minister AH Mahmood Ali has told Parliament on Wednesday. Replying a query from Jatiya Party MP Pir Fazlur Rahman, he said: The matter was discussed during the recent visit of the Indian foreign minister, Sushma Swaraj. The Indian government has agreed to extradite him.Hossain and his two accomplices were arrested from an apartment at Baguiati, not far from Kolkata’s Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport, on June 15. The Narayanganj City Ward-4 councillor was booked under Arms Act and Foreigners Act for illegal trespass into Indian territory without valid travel documents and for illegal possession of a weapon. All three are currently in police custody.His arrest was made nearly one and a half months after the seven murders in Narayanganj that shook the country.The port city’s Ward-2 Councillor Nazrul Islam and senior lawyer Chandan Kumar Sarkar and five others were abducted on April 27. Their decomposed bodies were recovered from the Shitalakhyya River several days later. Hossain had gone off the radar after the families of the victims alleged he orchestrated the abductions and murders. Bangladesh sought the help of the Interpol on May 22 to nab him, but it had also informed India to check out reports that Hossain had slipped into Kolkata. After his arrest, Bangladesh government began the process to bring him back from Kolkata under the extradition treaty. Hossain is believed to be the mastermind of the Narayanganj multiple murders, for which some officers of the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) are now in the dock. Assassinated councillor Nazrul Islam’s relatives alleged that the RAB officers took Tk 60 million from Hossain to carry out the abductions and murders and then helped him escape to Kolkata. But the RAB has denied the charge even though it had claimed that he fled to India. However, three officers of Narayanganj-based RAB-11 were removed from the force two days after the Apr 27 abductions. Later, their parent forces packed them off on forced retirement after allegations of their involvement in the crime surfaced. After the trio was arrested following a court order, all of them confessed to their roles in the abduction and murder of the seven men.