During a press briefing held at the SRB-9 headquarters in Sylhet on Wednesday, 16 September, Battalion Commander Additional DIG Sheikh Md. Rejaul Karim confirmed the arrest. He stated that Mujahid, son of Angur Miah from Budda village in Sarail upazila, confessed to his direct involvement in the assault during preliminary interrogation.

According to court filings and police documentation, Mujahid used the pseudonym ‘Rakib’ on Facebook to contact a professional dance troupe on 8 September. Pretending to hire performers for a wedding ceremony in Sarail, he agreed on a fee of 9,000 taka and transferred an advance payment of 2,000 taka. On 10 September, a 16-year-old girl, a 19-year-old woman, and a young male colleague arrived at the Sarail World Road intersection as instructed.

Mujahid and his associates met the performers at the junction and transported them via auto-rickshaw to the Shahbazpur Bridge area along the Titas River. There, the group was forced onto an engine-driven boat and taken to an isolated section of the river, where three armed accomplices were waiting.

Once in the middle of the river, the assailants cut the engine, held the male colleague at knifepoint, and subjected the two female artists to a brutal two-hour assault between 5:00 pm and 7:00 pm. Around 8:00 pm, the attackers abandoned the victims in a muddy marsh near Bhuiyar Ghat in Nasirnagar upazila before fleeing in the boat.

Following the assault, the victims filed a case under the Women and Children Repression Prevention Act at Sarail Police Station. Local police initially arrested 19-year-old Shanto Biswas. Intelligence gathered from Shanto, combined with tracking efforts by SRB-9, led officers to Mujahid’s hiding place in Sylhet.

SRB-9 Chief Sheikh Md. Rejaul Karim and Sarail Police Station Officer-in-Charge Abdur Razzaq confirmed that legal procedures are underway to transfer Mujahid to Sarail Police Station. Joint operations remain ongoing to track down and apprehend the remaining three suspects involved in the attack.