Villagers in Aminbazar, police claim them to be robbers; they found to be fun-loving students; families barricade roads
Six students were killed after hundreds of villagers in Amin Bazar on the city’s outskirts swooped on them with sticks and sharp weapons early yesterday on the night of Shab-e-Barat.
The reason behind the attack, which also left another person injured, remains unclear. Locals and police claimed the youths were robbers.
Al Amin, the lone survivor who suffered injuries all over his body, said they went to Keblarchar in Bardeshi village of Amin Bazar to manage some cannabis.
Keblarchar is known as one of the major drug dens in Dhaka.
Towhidur Rahman Palash, Kamruzzaman Kanto and Ibrahim Khalil of Bangla College, Shams Rahim Shamam of Maple Leaf International School, Tipu Sultan of Tejgaon College and Munib Sitab of Bangladesh University of Business and Technology died on the spot.
All aged between 16 and 22, they hailed from Darussalam, Kalyanpur and Shyamoli, just two kilometres off Amin Bazar. Families claimed the six were innocent but could not say why they went to the area.
Protesting the killings, several hundred locals of Darussalam blockade Mirpur road stretching from Kalyanpur to Technical Intersection for one and a half hours from 12:30pm yesterday and vandalised two buses.
Locals and police said the youths went to the village in an engine boat for robbery. Mahbubur Rahman, officer-in-charge of Savar Police Station, said they recovered four machetes from the group.
Al Amin, a sales representative of a juice company, said he along with his six friends went to Amin Bazar firstly on a rickshaw-van and then to Keblarchar on foot.
“We were walking along the riverbank at Keblarchar around 1:30am. All of a sudden, we saw a group of people come towards us with torch lights in their hands,” Al Amin, 18, told reporters at Savar Thana Health Complex where he took treatment.
The people, without saying a word, started beating them shouting “dacoit, dacoit”.
While the mob was battering the seven, a woman asked all not to beat Al Amin, he said when his father Khabir Bepari met him at the health complex.
Al Amin was being interrogated by Savar police yesterday.
Alarmed by a rise in robbery and snatching incidents over the last one month, locals formed several teams to patrol the area, carrying sticks and sharp weapons, locals said.
According to them, in one month five incidents of robbery took place in the village while criminals frequently forced sand traders in the region to pay extortion.
“We saw a trawler with several people coming to the sand-filled place around 1:30pm [yesterday]. Suspecting them robbers, we instantly passed the information to other teams over mobile phones,” said a middle-aged man.
On instructions of local leaders, they allowed the “gang” to enter deep into the village and alarmed through loudspeakers of local mosques about the “robbers’ intrusion”, he said, preferring anonymity.
This prompted the villagers, many of who were on prayers of Shab-e-Barat night, to attack the youths.
The man, who is a member of one of the teams, also said the number of robbers was 16 to 17 and the all but the seven managed to flee in the trawler in the direction they had come.
Under mob assault, the youths kept saying that they were students and residents of Darussalam area, several other members of the team said.
They requested all to check their identities, but the mob could not be restrained.
On information, police reached the spot and managed to rescue only Al Amin.
“Receiving a wireless message, I along with a police team rushed to the spot and saw around 500 to 600 locals beating the youths. When I removed the mob, I found the six already dead,” said Sub-Inspector Hares Shikder.
Two cases–one by a local sand trader Abdul Malek and the other by police–were filed in connection with the incident.
Malek in his case statement said those who were killed in the mob beating were robbers and four of them extorted Tk 5 thousand from him earlier that night.
Besides, Sub-Inspector Anwar Hossain of the police station filed a murder case accusing five to six unidentified villagers of the killings.
Mizanur Rahman, Dhaka district superintendent of police, said a gang of 14 to 15 robbers came to Keblarchar and took away Tk 5 thousand from sand trader Abdul Malek.
Locals chased and caught seven of them when they made another attempt of robbery.
“The rest managed to flee in the engine boat they came in, while the rest came under mob beating,” the SP said, adding possibly this was the gang’s first attempt of robbery.
-With The Daily Star input
