A Cumilla court on Monday ordered the authorities concerned to conduct a cross-match of DNA profiles of three former army personnel with those earlier collected from the clothing of Sohagi Jahan Tonu, a Cumilla Govt Victoria College student who was killed in 2016.

Cumilla Chief Judicial Magistrate Md Mominul Haque passed the order after Inspector Tariqul Islam of the Police Bureau of Investigation (PBI), also the investigating officer of the case filed over the murder, appeared before the court and sought permission to carry out the DNA cross-matching.

According to the IO, DNA profiles had previously been extracted from Tonu’s personal clothing soon after the incident. However, those samples were never matched with any suspects at the time.

“The court has now directed that the DNA profiles of three individuals be cross-matched with the samples collected earlier,” Tariqul said, adding that the three suspects are former army personnel who have since retired.

However, the identities of the suspects were not disclosed.

Earlier in the day, the PBI officer submitted a progress report to the court, which also instructed him to place an updated report on the next date of hearing.

Tonu, a second-year student of the history department at Victoria College, went missing on March 20, 2016, after leaving for private tuition inside Cumilla Cantonment.

Her body was later recovered from a nearby forest area, prompting her father Yar Hossain to file a murder case at Cumilla Kotwali Model Police Station.

The case has since seen multiple changes of investigating agencies, moving from local police to the Detective Branch, then Criminal Investigation Department, and later to the PBI, but no breakthrough has been achieved so far.

Family members have long alleged a lack of transparency in the investigation, claiming that earlier DNA tests were conducted but their results were never made public.

Tariqul is the sixth officer to lead the probe.