Murder of engineer Subrata Saha was premeditated: Family

Engineer Subrata Saha was murdered in a premeditated manner by a group of people he was working with on a project for Hotel InterContinental, Dhaka, his family claims.

"He [Subrata] was working on a Tk600 crore renovation project for the InterContinental at the time of his death. A gang embezzled a huge amount of money from the project's budget and Subrata was being pressured to take responsibility for the embezzled money, said Nupur Saha, wife of Subrata Saha, in a press conference at Dhaka Reporters Unity on Monday.

"But when he refused to take responsibility, the top brass of the project kept pressuring him for a month before his death. When their efforts failed they killed him, throwing him off the roof of the building, and tried to pass it off as a suicide," said Nupur.

"Ashraful Rahim, head of the Planning and Engineering Department of InterContinental, and hotel manager Azizar Rahman were directly involved in this incident," she said.

A case has been filed against them said Nupur Saha, demanding their arrest.

"Two months have passed since the death of Subrata, but I am not seeing any hope of a fair trial. Although the police gave importance to the matter in the beginning, now they are playing a silent role," she said.

"The hotel authorities are not contacting us about the salary they owed my husband and we are undergoing extreme financial crisis," she added.

Subrata Saha's daughter Sudipta Saha, engineer Riasat Sumon, and engineer Bishwanath Saha, among others, were present at the press conference organised by the 18th batch of students of Chittagong University of Engineering and Technology (CUET).

Subrata Saha's body was recovered from the InterContinental Hotel, Dhaka, on 25 May.

Upon recovering the body, police said Subrata arrived at the hotel in the morning and immediately went to the rooftop of the building. His body was found lying on the shade covering of the second floor.   

"Whether he jumped off the roof on his own or was pushed could not be determined upon further investigation," a police official said at the time.