Bangladesh police arrested three people, including a university professor, for not registering information about their tenants who were among the hardliners who launched the cafe attack that killed 20 people.
Senior police officer Mohammad Masudur Rahman said that a professor at North South University in Dhaka who has been identified as Gias Uddin Ahsan was arrested by the Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) along with his nephew and the manager of his apartment. He said it is mandatory for all landlords to register information about their tenants to the police, but they failed to do so. All the three appeared in court on Sunday.
Rahman said that the five militants, who attacked the Holey Artisan Bakery cafe in Dhaka on July 1, had rented the apartment along with another person in a nearby residential area in May. They started living in the apartment from June.
"From here they attacked the cafe. There were other militants also who fled after the attack," he told Reuters.
He added: "We also found evidence that they kept grenades and other explosives in the apartment. If we had been informed they were living there, then that brutal killing would not have been possible and we could also have arrested the other militants who fled."
The DMP issued an order earlier to all the apartment owners to register detailed information of their tenants for a database. This database would help the police to track those criminals or militants who were using rented accommodation as their hideouts.
Twenty people, including 18 foreigners were killed in the recent Dhaka attack. Later the police shot five of the attackers dead and rescued 13 hostages.
Interior Minister Asaduzzaman Khan said on Saturday that the investigators had already identified the masterminds of the Dhaka cafe attack and they would soon be arrested.
