The arrestee is also a suspect in the August 21grenade attack on an Awami League (AL) rally on Bangabandhu Avenue, police said.

The Jamaat leader has close links to Mufti Abdul Hannan, prime accused in the case filed for planting a bomb weighing 76 kg near the meeting venue of the then prime minister Sheikh Hasina at Kotalipara of Gopalganj district, intelligence sources said.

Mufti Hannan stayed at the the sources mentioned.

State Minister for Home Lutfozzaman Babar at a meeting on March 30 termed Dhira, a ward level Jamaat leader in Khulna, the mastermind and financier of Belal murder. If he is arrested, the mystery behind the killings of Belal and another journalist, Humayun Kabir Balu, would be unfolded, he said.

He ordered police to arrest Dhira.

Acting on in a tip off that Dhira was moving about at Malibagh crossing in Dhaka, Detective Branch (DB) of Khulna Metropolitan Police (KMP) contacted the officer-in-charge of Paltan Police Station for arresting Dhira. A team of Paltan police rushed to the spot and nabbed him from a business firm at about 4:00 pm.

A seven-member KMP team immediately left for Dhaka to take the arrestee to Khulna by last night, said KMP Deputy Commissioner Akbar Ali.

Police sources said Dhira is an illegal firearms dealer and has close links to Islamic militants and extremists since 1992. He took training in a foreign country on handling arms and grenades.

He is a close associate of founder of Purba Banglaar Communist Party's Janajuddha faction Abdur Rashid Malitha alias Tapan and two other leaders, Shoiab and Shumon. He is one of the financiers of this outlawed party, the sources added.

Dhira had threatened Belal with death in January this year.

Belal, Khulna bureau chief of Dainik Sangram, was fatally injured in a bomb attack on the night of February 5 at Khulna Press Club and succumbed to injuries on February 11 at the Combined Military Hospital in Dhaka.

Dhira went into hiding soon after the incident.