Boy dies as truckers force him to drink liquor
A seven-year-old boy died on Monday, four days after he was forced to drink alcohol by a group of drug addicts at Tejgaon rail gate in the capital.
Kala Chand, son of Abdur Razzak Bhandari of the city’s Tejgaon truck stand slum area, lost the battle for life at National Institute of Diseases of Chest and Hospital (NIDCH).
Witnesses said truck driver Jahangir and two others stopped Chand in front of a grocery shop in the area when he was going to buy his breakfast around 11:30am on Thursday.
They then gave him some drink in a can.
Taking a few sips, Chand threw the can and tried to run away but the three culprits chased him down and took him behind a shop, witnesses added.
They then held him tightly and poured alcohol in his mouth, his mother Kohinur Begum told these correspondents.
Intoxicated, Chand lurched down a few yards and fainted.
He regained conscious in the afternoon after he was made to drink some tamarind juice, but fell sick again immediately afterwards. He was first admitted to Dhaka Medical College Hospital and was later transferred to NIDCH.
Chand’s father left the family of six and married another woman two years ago. His mother has been working at Karwan Bazar fish market to support the family since.
On the fateful day, she gave Chand Tk 5 to buy breakfast after repeated request.
“My child could not eat the breakfast he longed for,” she cried.
Terming the incident brutal, criminology experts said degradation of social values is responsible for the death.
“It indicates that we have so much to do to safeguard our children,” said ASM Shahjahan, former inspector general of police.
The culture of impunity has encouraged the criminals to commit such an act in broad daylight, observed Shahjahan, also former adviser to a caretaker government.
According to him, this is only one glaring example of children being abused. “We would not know it, had the boy not died.”
Nehal Karim, a professor of sociology at Dhaka University, said the tragic incident revealed the extent of degeneration of social values in the country.
The culprits must be punished, said Karim, also a criminology expert.
Omar Faruque, officer-in-charge of Tejgaon Industrial Area Police Station, said they recorded a general diary in this connection and will convert it into a murder case upon receiving the postmortem report.
He also said they are trying to catch the criminals.
