Barisal police did not petition for remand.

Iqbal Ahmed Bulbul allegedly murdered his wife Mary, sister in law Sophia and niece Ayon on September 19 1999 in Minnesota, USA. A street cleaner on a highway heading towards Canadian border recovered the butchered bodies of Mary and Ayon stuffed in a plastic bag. Dead body of Sofia was also found later, said Nilotpal Dey, officer-in-charge of Barisal DB.

Police and other sources said Interpol issued a nonbailable arrest warrant against Bulbul for triple murder charges.

Mainur Rahman Chowdhury, superintendent of police in Barisal, said the higher authorities would decide on whether investigation and trial of Bulbul would be made here in Bangladesh or he would be handed over to USA through Interpol.

According to the police report, Bulbul married classmate Mary in 1991 while in Dhaka University. The couple went to USA in 1996 and settled there. Sophia and her son Ayon, 3, sister and niece of Mary, joined them in 1996.

In 1998, Bulbul was arrested for torturing his wife and was jailed for more than a month in USA.

Bulbul returned to Bangladesh with his son Nirjhor in 2000. He cooked up a story that he had to flee to Bangladesh to save his life from the goons hired by his wife and her lover. He soon engaged himself with the ruling coalition's politics.

A special task force of FBI USA has been investigating the triple murder and visited Babuganj of Barisal and Rasullabad of Brahmanbaria, the native villages of Bulbul and Mary in 2002.