The principal accused in the Sutrapur double murder case in the city, Rabid Hasan Sumon, has admitted he knew that his accomplices had picked up Mohsin and Saem and were torturing them at the Sutrapur Rifle Club, DB police sources said.

He however claimed that he was not present at the club when the two youths were killed there.

Sumon and Sharif Ahmed Sharif, another accused in the case, were interrogated together at the DB office at Minto Road in the city yesterday.

Both were on remand.

Sumon told the interrogators that during the killings, he was staying at he ^afty ^tar

nearby places and was getting all information from Sharif, the sources said.

The two youths were murdered on September 15 last year and their bodies -- cut into six pieces each -were recovered from a manhole at nearby Loharpool on the following day.

Sumon then went into hiding and was arrested from Comilla recently. He

Sharif was arrested soon after the murder and sent to Dhaka Central Jail following a confessional statement. He was again placed on one-day DB remand.

Sumon further told DB police that earlier, President of the Rifle Club Sohrab and Secretary Advocate Jalil controlled it. But after the death of Sohrab in mid-2000, one Jalu was in control of the club and finally he took control of it a few months before the killings.

Following Sharif's arrest several

months ago, he confessed that he had informed Sumon about the death of Mohsin.

But Sumon yesterday contradicted this and claimed he was told that one of the two youths -- Mohsin- had become unconscious.

According to some sources, Sharif had also said at that time Moshin was killed at about 3 am on September 15. In the evening, Sumon went to Awami League office and returned to Sutrapur at around 7: 30 pm. The other youth -- Saem--was being kept a hostage at the store-room behind the club. He was strangulated at about 3 am on September 16.

A butcher, Munna, was then brought to the club at gunpoint and forced him to cut the two bodies into pieces.

Minto, an auto-rickshaw driver, took away the bodies in another auto-rickshaw and dumped those in the manhole.