RAB sued for murder, ‘shootout’ questioned

Polytech students’ death in city
A murder case was lodged with the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (CMM) court against 11 people including 10 members of the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) on charge of killing two students of the Dhaka Polytechnic Institute in an alleged ‘shootout’ with the force at Manik Mia Avenue on May 27.
Though the case was filed on Monday it was taken into cognizance yesterday by the court which asked the officer-in-charge (OC) of the Tejgaon police station to investigate into the matter and submit the probe report before the court by August 20.    
M Mohsin Sheikh (23), a final year student of the Electrical Department, and M Ali Jinnah (22), a third year student of Mechanical Department of the Polytechnic Institute were killed in an alleged encounter with the RAB at Manik Mia Avenue in the small hours on May 27.
Jasim Uddin, brother-in-law of the Md Ali Jinnah killed in the RAB encounter on May 27 filed the case under section 302/34 of the Penal Code with the court on Monday.
The 10 RAB-2 members accused in murder case are: deputy assistant director (DAD) Md Furjal Hossain, Havilder Md Abdul Kuddus, lance nayak Md Shekher Ali, Sainik Md Monsur Elahi, Lance Nayak Md Imran Ali, DAD Menhazuddun, lance corporal Md Siddiqur Rahman, sub inspector (SI) Shafiqul Alam, corporal Md Monirul Islam and  Md Nurul Huda. Sajib, a fourth year student of the Civil Engineering Department of the Dhaka Polytechnic Institute and a resident of the Zohir Raihan Hall of the institute was also accused in the case.
In the case details, the plaintiff alleged that the members of the RAB-2 with the help of their associates killed the two meritorious students of the Dhaka Polytechnic Institute in a planned way after staging a drama of crossfire without having any specific charges. The RAB members later also staged a drama of recovering two revolvers and four rounds of bullets from the possession of the deceased, the case said. 
In the case details, the plaintiff also said that assistant commissioner of the Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) ASM Mahtabuddin on May 29, two days after of the gunfight told the media that they did not find any case or complaint lodged against them with any police station.
The principal of the Dhaka Polytechnic Institute Shamsul Alam said that he had not got any complaint against the two students of his institute. “Both of them were meritorious students and well behaved,” he certified.
The plaintiff urged the court to issue warrants of arrest against the accused and take necessary measures against them as per the sections of the penal code with a view to ensuring justice.
According to the case details, Jinnah and Mohsin along with Sajib, an accused in the murder case, went out from their Zohir Raihan dormitory of the Dhaka Polytechnic Institute at around 10pm on May 27 after having dinner at the hall. Sajib returned to the hall at around 1am but Jinnah and Mohsin did not return. Amir Hossain, guard of the Zohir Raihan Hall said this to the family members of the victims killed in the alleged shootout.
Sajib phoned the family members of the Jinnah in the morning on May 27 and informed that Jinnah and Mohsin were killed in an encounter with the RAB at Manik Mia Avenue in the capital, the case statement said.     
“A press release of the RAB claimed that a team of the RAB-2 set up a check post at the south of the National Parliament for checking snatching. As part of their duty, the RAB team challenged two men for their suspicious movement at around 12.30am. The men started running to escape and at one stage they fired gunshots at the RAB personnel who also instantly fired back for saving their lives triggering a brief gunfight, the press release said, adding that both men had several bullet wounds and died on the spot. Seven bullets have been exchanged from the RAB side during the gunfight. Upon information, police rushed to the scene and recovered the bodies with the help of the people and sent those to the morgue of Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH) for autopsy. In the press release, RAB failed to provide their criminal records after showing them unidentified,” the case details said.
Jasim mentioned in his case that his younger brother identified his brother-in-law Jinnah at the morgue of the DMCH.
“According to the autopsy report prepared by an forensic doctor of the DMCH in presence of an executive magistrate, a total of seven bullets pierced the bodies of the Jinnah and Mohsin. Injury marks were also found on the legs of the Jinnah,” the case details said.
The plaintiff in the case said that during the gunfight, RAB exchanged seven bullets and the autopsy report also said the same. In the case, he raised some questions including how all the seven bullets fired from the RAB firearms hit the two victims, from how far they fired the gunshots that none of the bullets went astray and how none of the RAB men was injured in it.
According to the post-mortem report, bullets hit on mid and right side of the chest of Jinnah while bullets pierced neck and abdomen of the Mohsin, the case said.   
How bullets hit in the chest and neck of the victims instead of their back if any gunfight took place, the plaintiff questioned. Referring the local people, the plaintiff mentioned in the case that no shootout had taken place at Manik Mia Avenue in the early hours of May 27.
Mentioning a report of a private TV channel he said in the case that five men were seen gossiping near the place of occurrence, the plaintiff also questioned that how it was possible that some people were gossiping at the time gunfight.
The killings have happened amid continued discussions on extra-judicial killings by the law enforcers and protests by the human-rights organisations at home and abroad. Killings in so-called crossfire have been widely criticised for years by the national and international rights organisations and countries. A New York-based human-rights watchdog on May 18 recommended that the elite anticrime force be disbanded given its “long history of arbitrary arrests, torture, and extrajudicial killings”. Over the past five years, the military, the and the police have been responsible for well over 1,000 killings, Human Rights Watch said in the report on Bangladesh.
Human Rights Watch and others have long contended that many of these deaths, often described as “crossfire killings,” were actually extra-judicial executions of people in custody. Bodies of the victims often had wounds that suggested that they had been tortured.
 
Courtesy of The Independent