Russell Mia yesterday confessed in a city court to killing Saoda Akhtar, the girl he had sought to marry. He was brought before the Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate’s Court around noon. Magistrate Zahidul Kabir recorded his statement for two and a half hours and later sent him to Barisal Central Jail. In the statement, Russell, a management student at Barisal University, claimed he was not afraid of punishment for killing Saoda, a first-year student of accounting at the same institution.
His judicial statement was similar to the one he had made to the police earlier, said Barisal Kotwali Police Station’s Officer-in-Charge and investigation officer Shakhwat Hossain.
Russell tried to justify the killing as an act of revenge for being cheated.
He said he had bought a machete from Bazaar Road in the city on September 4. The following day, he forced Saoda to take a rickshaw ride with him away from the campus. As Saoda resisted, Russell hacked her in the neck and back and fled the scene.
Fatally injured, Saoda was taken to the capital by air ambulance, but she died at Dhaka Medical College Hospital.
On September 6, Russell had fled to Dhaka through Mawa on a local bus and spent the night with his friend Apurba. He later went to Gazipur and worked as a labourer at a construction site on September 7 and 8.
On September 9, he fled to Chittagong. He was in contact with his family all along. Police arrested him at Kalshi Dighir Par in the port city on September 12.
-With The Daily Star input
