A High Court (HC) bench of Justice Fatema Nazib and Justice Shikdar Mahmudur Rajib on Tuesday granted six more months to the task force to complete investigation into the murder of the Sagar-Runi journalist couple and submit the final report to the court.
On 30 September 2024, the HC asked the interim government to organise a task force drawing investigation experts from different agencies to speed up the submission of the final report within six months.
Over the years, the submission date for the investigation report in the sensational murder case has been postponed more than 117th times and the investigation authorities have been changed four times.
The interim government, in a bid to expedite the long-stalled investigation, formed a high-powered task force on 23 October 2024, led by the chief of the Police Bureau of Investigation (PBI).
Meanwhile, Additional Attorney General (AAG) Arshadur Rauf on Tuesday said the evidence of Sagar Sarowar and Meherun Runi murder case partially burnt in a fire is incorrect.
“The news suggesting that case documents were burnt is not true,” he told journalists in the afternoon.
AAG Rauf came up with this clarification as the prosecution told the HC that documents related to the case kept under the Detective Branch (DB) of police were partially burnt.
Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) in a media statement also dismissed media reports of fire damage to the sensational case files.
The brutal murder of the journalist couple took place on 11 February 2012, yet law enforcement agencies have not been able to identify the motive behind the much-discussed crime.
Several years ago, in a progress report submitted to the court, Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) revealed that DNA samples from two unidentified people were found at the crime scene. However, those people are yet to be identified.
Sagar was a news editor at private television channel Maasranga TV and Runi a senior reporter at ATN Bangla. They were killed in their West Rajabazar apartment in Dhaka.