CUMILLA, May 18: The blood of another person has been found in a sample collected from the clothes of Sohagi Jahan Tonu, a student and theatre activist from Comilla Victoria Government College who was murdered a decade ago. DNA tests have found that sperm and blood samples of four people were present on Tonu's clothes.
The current investigating officer of the case, Inspector Md Tariqul Islam of the Kalyanpur Office of the Police Bureau of Investigation (PBI), revealed on Sunday night that a letter was sent to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of the police a few months ago requesting details about the samples found on Tonu's clothes.
"It was reported about a month ago that, along with the sperm of three men, a sample of another person's blood was found." The investigating officer said, "This is not new information. The DNA information of three men came to light in 2017. Now information on another person has come to light."
Tonu's body was recovered from a forest near the powerhouse of Cumilla Cantonment on the evening of Mar 20, 2016.
The following day, her father Yaar Hossain filed a murder case against unidentified individuals at the Cumilla Kotwali Model Police Station.
It was alleged from the beginning that Tonu was raped and then killed. Questions were raised about who was involved and how this incident happened in a protected area like the Cantonment.
The killing sparked outrage across the country. Human chain demonstrations and protest rallies were held in a number of places, including Dhaka, to demand Tonu's killers be brought to justice.
Initially, local police and the district Detective Branch (DB) investigated the case, followed by a prolonged investigation by the Criminal Investigation Department (CID). However, they failed to solve the case.
Later, following orders from the Police Headquarters, the CID handed over the case files to the PBI Headquarters in Dhaka on Oct 21, 2020.
Inspector Md Mujibur Rahman of PBI investigated the case for nearly four years.
In September 2024, Inspector Md Tariqul Islam took charge as the sixth investigating officer of the case.
The PBI reported the first arrest of a suspect in April this year, after the BNP government came to power.
Arrestee Hafizur Rahman is a retired senior warrant officer of the army, who was on duty at the Cumilla Cantonment when Tonu was murdered.
Hafizur was sent to jail on Apr 25 after being interrogated for three days in police custody.
Before that, a letter had been sent to the PBI from the court to inquire about the progress of the investigation. In view of this, the investigating officer appeared in court on Apr 6 and petitioned for a DNA profile to be done on the samples of three individuals. �"bdnews24
