Sagar-Runi murder case: Mystery not solved even after 13 years

The court has ordered to quickly conclude the investigation into the murder case of journalist couple Sagar Sarwar and Meherun Runi due to the prolonged delay in submitting the investigation report. Dhaka Metropolitan Magistrate (CMM) Court Magistrate Minhazur Rahman gave this order on Sunday.

The investigation report of the case was supposed to be submitted today, but it was not done. The court has set a new date for submitting the report on November 30. The date for submitting the investigation report of the case has already been postponed 121 times.

Sub-Inspector (SI) of the Crime and Information Department of Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) Rafiqul Islam confirmed the matter to the media.

On the court's order, the investigating officer, Additional Superintendent of Police of PBI Md. Azizul Haque appeared in court and gave a verbal explanation about the progress of the investigation. After that, the court ordered him to complete the investigation and submit the report as soon as possible.

Investigation slows down after a decade

On February 11, 2012, a journalist couple was brutally murdered in a rented house in West Rajabazar in the capital. Sagar Sarwar was the news editor of Maasranga Television at the time and Meherun Runi was a senior reporter at ATN Bangla.

After the incident, Runi's brother Nausher Alam filed a case with Sher-e-Bangla Nagar Police Station. Initially, the police station police started an investigation, but the investigation was quickly handed over to the Intelligence Department (DB) of the DMP. But after just 62 days, the DB submitted a report to the High Court stating its failure. Then the court handed over the case to RAB.

After being in charge of the investigation for almost a decade, the case was handed over from RAB to the Police Bureau of Investigation (PBI) on November 4, 2023. Currently, Additional Superintendent of Police Md. Azizul Haque is in charge of the case.

Eight people have been arrested since the incident. Two of them are currently out on bail, while six are in prison. However, despite such a long period of time, there has been no concrete progress in the case, which has led to intense frustration and anger among the general public, including the journalist community.