A 17-year-old welding assistant was allegedly tortured in police custody in Jatrabari, as result of which he died in the Dhaka Medical College Hospital, said his family members on Thursday.
The victim, Sagar Ahmed, a resident of Kutubkhali, had been employed at a workshop in Nayan Nagar, said family members.
Sagar’s mother, Lutfa Begum, said that the police arrested her son when he was returning from his working place at about 4:30am on November 25.
She alleged that the police of Jatrabari thana called her and demanded Tk 20,000, and threatened her with dire consequences if she did not pay up.
‘When I approached one Shaheen with Tk 3,000, the police got angry and filed a case against my son. Because of the case, a court allowed the police to take my son on a two-day remand and they tortured him mercilessly,’ she added.
The victim’s mother said that when she went to the police, they said her son had been sent to the Dhaka Central Jail.
Hospital sources said on November 30 that the jail police admitted the critically wounded Sagar to the coronary care unit of the Dhaka Medical College Hospital in the morning, where he died at about 8:00pm.
His body was kept at the morgue after port-mortem examination and the family members identified him on Thursday morning.
‘We went to the jail and were informed that my brother had died, and then we rushed to the morgue,’ the victim’s brother, Nur Islam, told New Age.
Jatrabari police subinspector, Shaheen Uddin, said it was quite embarrassing for him as he was not informed of the matter.
He, however, asked the victim’s family to identify the person, who demanded money at the police station.
Shaheen said the investigation officer of the case was dealing the matter from the beginning.
The case investigation officer, Ismail Hossain, claimed that the mob caught five muggers, including Sagar, at about 11:30pm on November 25 in Kajla.
Following a case under the Speedy Trial Act, a Dhaka court allowed the police to take Sagar on a two-day remand on November 27 and 28, said the sub-inspector. ‘We sent him to the court after the remand.’
The hospital sources said that the doctors had identified the cause of death as ‘cardiac arrest’, but there were marks of injury all over Sagar’s body.
They said that Sagar’s age could not be ascertained as his family said he was 17, the police claimed he was 18 while the hospital registered his age as 25.
According to Odhikar, the human rights watchdog, a total number of 95 persons allegedly died while in custody since January 2010.
During this period 55 persons died while in jail, mostly due to ‘sickness’, while two persons died in court custody, one each in the thana and in RAB’s custody.
