Anwarul Azim Anar of the Awami League went missing on May 13, a day after reaching India for medical treatment, say relatives.
A member of Bangladesh’s governing party has been found murdered in the Indian city of Kolkata, more than a week after he went missing, Bangladeshi Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan said.
Anwarul Azim Anar, 56, who won his third consecutive term in a constituency in the border district of Jhenaidah from the Awami League party, went missing on May 13, a day after going to India to seek medical treatment, according to his relatives.
Khan told reporters that three Bangladeshis had been arrested over the death. “We cannot disclose all information at the moment for the sake of the investigation,” the minister said on Wednesday.
Anar’s body was found in an abandoned house in Kolkata’s New Town in the early hours of Wednesday, a deputy police commissioner in the city said.
Bangladesh’s Foreign Minister Hasan Mahmud said police did not find the body in the flat where he was believed to have been killed, citing information from the Bangladesh Mission in Kolkata.
A report on the parliamentarian’s disappearance was lodged by his relatives at the Baranagar police station in North Kolkata on May 18.
According to the report, Anar visited the residence of a person named Gopal Biswas in Kolkata on May 12. The next day, he departed from Biswas’s residence to see a doctor. He informed his family that he would be back in Bangladesh in the evening.
But he remained incommunicado since then, Anar’s personal assistant Abdour Rauf told Anadolu news agency.
On May 19, his daughter Mumtarin Ferdous Doreen told reporters she had sought the assistance of the detective branch of Bangladesh police to locate her father.
For the past three days, the special unit had been working with Kolkata police, its chief Harun-or-Rashid told Anadolu.
“His body was found early in the morning today,” Rashid said, adding: “The cause of death is still unknown.”
Anar’s daughter was in Kolkata on Wednesday to receive the body after an autopsy is conducted.
Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina expressed her condolences and deep grief over the lawmaker’s death.
