The New Nation - Internet Edition

Staff Reporter

Jatiya Party's former member of parliament Anwara Begum was taken to three days' police remand yesterday for her alleged involvement in stealing the two 1,500-year-old rare terracotta artifacts of Hindu god Vishnu from the cargo complex at Zia International Airport.

At the same time, arrested former deputy secretary of the Ministry of Cultural Affairs Mizanur Rahman was sent to jail custody.

In connection with a case filed with the Airport Police Station, they were produced before the court of additional chief metropolitan magistrate Ehsanul Huq in the morning. The Airport police pleaded to the court to place the accused on a 10-day remand. The court, however, granted police three-day remand.

The two statues were stolen from a crate when they were being sent to France for exhibition in a museum in Paris. Initially, police arrested 15 people in connection with the case and took them under a five-day remand.

Later, according to the confession of the arrested person, RAB arrested former Jatiya Party MP Anwara Begum from her Uttara residence. She was produced before the court yesterday.

Besides, 27 pieces of the invaluable statues-one black and the other white-were recovered by RAB from a garbage dumping ground at Aminbazar near the capital Dhaka.

Meanwhile, RAB has been conducting drives across the country to arrest one Abbas and Nasir for their alleged involvement in stealing the statues.

Col Gulzaruddin Ahmed, additional director general of RAB, told journalists in the morning that a number of teams of the RAB were carrying out raids in different parts of the country to arrest the two suspects.

On the other hand, different types of information were received from the arrested persons. RAB learnt that a 10-member syndicate was involved in stealing the Vishnu statues from the airport.

Intelligence agencies have also been watching the movements of some suspects receiving confessional statements of the arrested people. They are expecting that if the mastermind Abbas Ali behind the stealing of the statues at ZIA can be arrested, more information about different artefact smuggling groups in the country will be known.