Broken by the discovery that his 21-year-old son Rohan Imtiaz was one of the suspected terrorists who stormed a Dhaka cafe and killed 20 people, a Bangladeshi politician has offered an apology to the parents of Tarishi Jain, the Indian student killed in the terror strike.
"An Indian girl was killed in the attack, I can only apologise to India and to her parents ...I can only say I am an unfortunate father. I don't have enough words to apologise," Imtiaz Khan Babul told at his fifth floor apartment in an upscale locality in Bangladesh capital Dhaka.
The Awami League politician said he was shocked to learn that one of the suspected terrorists was his son Rohan, who he described as "a topper in class and math, a football fanatic and Man U supporter."
"I identified my son from a picture released by the ISIS...I was stunned ...," Mr Khan said, adding that Rohan had left home in December last, never to be seen again till the deadly siege at the Dhaka cafe, where terrorists took dozens of diners hostage and then brutally killed 20 of them after separating foreigners.
Among them was Tarishi Jain, 18, a student at UC Berkley in the US, who was visiting her father in Dhaka. She was given last rites in Gurgaon yesterday.
The image of Rohan with a gun haunts his father. "Where did he get his training, where did he go during the last six months," he said.
Bangladesh's government has said all the attackers were highly educated and from wealthy families. Rohan had graduated from Scholastica, a school attended by children of Bangaldesh's elite, and was enrolled at the BRAC University.
Mr Khan said Rohan left home on December 30 saying he was leaving for the university and did not return. He was in Kolkata for medical treatment at the time, he said.
"We tried looking for him everywhere and finally on the January 2, I registered a case with the police. His mobile was switched off, and he was not on social media at all. We put out several messages on Facebook asking him come back," said Mr Khan.
He said he had "never noticed anything abnormal or got any indication" of Rohan's involvement with radical Islam. "I never saw him reading or accessing any Jihadi material. We have a common computer," the father said. "But he had a mobile. I don't know whether he was reading jihadi material through that," he said and added, "someone must have planted these thoughts in his head".
Rohan Imtiaz and five other young men were shot dead by Bangladeshi security forces on Saturday at the end of the terror attack, claimed by the ISIS. One was taken alive and is being questioned.
