New information from Meghalaya Police on Ishaq Ali Khan Panna's death

After the body of Ishaq Ali Khan Panna, the former central general secretary of the Chhatra League and a member of the Pirojpur district Awami League executive committee, was found in Meghalaya, India, the police in that state are now pretty sure that he was murdered.

His body will be handed over to his family on Saturday, Meghalaya Police said. However, it is not yet certain whether he was killed inside Bangladesh and his body left in India, or he was killed in India.

Ishaq Ali Khan Panna became General Secretary of Chhatra League in 1994. In 2012, he became the co-editor of the central sub-committee of the Awami League. He was a member of the executive committee of Pirojpur District Awami League.

BSF sources say Ishaq Ali Khan Panna's body was found about one and a half kilometers from the Indian border, but they believe he was not murdered in India.

They also insist that they have no information that any Bangladeshi nationals have entered the Meghalaya border region in recent times.

Panna's body was found lying in a betel nut orchard in Meghalaya's East Jaintia Hills district. East Jaintia Hills district police say they are on the way to complete the preliminary investigation. The post-mortem examination of the body was completed at the Civil Hospital in Khliriat, the district headquarters. His body is now kept in the morgue there.

East Jaintia Hills Superintendent of Police Giri Prasad M said that the post-mortem examination is over but the forensic investigation is going on. “The forensic investigation is yet to be completed, so we are not releasing the autopsy report right now,” Giri Prasad said.

However, sources in the Meghalaya Police have confirmed that post-mortem has proved that Ishaq Ali Khan Panna was strangulated. Apart from strangulation marks, there are no other marks of injury on the body.

How Panna's body was found

Meghalaya police say that on the afternoon of August 26, a dead body was found lying in a betel nut garden in the Dona Bhoi area of ​​East Jaintia Hills district, bordering Bangladesh.

Local villagers found the decomposing body. Superintendent of Police says they found Bangladeshi passport with the body. His name is known from there. It is said that around 30 million Indian rupees equivalent to US dollars were found with him, but the police say this information is not correct.

Giri Prasad informs, “Apart from the passport, a smartwatch and his clothes were found with the body. It was the villagers who found the body”.

He said on Friday night that Panna's family's request to the Indian Ministry of External Affairs for the return of the body from Bangladesh had been approved. The body will be handed over to his family on Saturday morning.

What the BSF is saying

A section of the media reported that Ishaq Ali Khan crossed the Emerald border into India and fell while climbing a mountain. That's when he died of a heart attack.

A section of the media was also suggesting that he might have died after being chased by the BSF while crossing the border.

An officer of the Meghalaya border region of the BSF, however, has clearly stated that the reports circulating that the BSF may be involved in the unfortunate death of Ishaq Ali Khan Panna are completely false.

The BSF official said that they do not have information that any Bangladeshi has infiltrated through that area recently.

They initially think that Ishaq Ali Khan Panna was killed inside Bangladesh and his body dumped in India. Meghalaya police sources also say that Ishaq Ali Khan Panna was probably killed inside Bangladesh. However, they need to conduct further investigations to be sure.

What is the secret to know?

The question here is, how did someone manage to enter India with a dead body, avoiding the attention of the border guards? There is no clear answer yet.

However, earlier BNP leader and former minister Salahuddin Ahmed was brought blindfolded from Bangladesh by road and left on the streets of Shillong, the capital of Meghalaya.

However, there were allegations that Bangladeshi law enforcement agencies or some intelligence agency had done the work with the help of the Indian Border Guard. It was the early morning incident on May 11, 2015, near the golf course in Shillong, the capital of Meghalaya.

A traffic police officer on duty there at the time said that the man was asking some people at an unknown place which place it was. He then introduced himself as a former Minister and Member of Parliament of Bangladesh. He also says his name.

He was then taken away by the police. His treatment continued for some time, on the other hand, Salahuddin Ahmed was also arrested on the charge of entering India illegally. Just two months before that, on March 10, 2015, he suddenly disappeared in Dhaka. Even then, the mystery of who left Salahuddin Ahmed in Shillong was not resolved.

So how Ishaq Ali Khan Panna came to India and was killed, or someone killed him in Bangladesh and left him in India, these questions still remain unsolved.

Source: BBC

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