Complains lone survivor of Aminbazar mob beating
Al Amin, the lone survivor of last month’s mob beating at Aminbazar, yesterday alleged a government probe body member threatened him with torture taking him on remand.
For further enquiry, the committee took Amin from his Darussalam house yesterday around 10:00am to Keblarchar in Baradeshi village of Aminbazar where a mob of several hundred villagers beat him injured and his six friends dead on early July 18.
Amin, out on bail in a case filed with Savar Police Station for robbery, said, on the spot a committee member in plainclothes told him that his statement contradicts with the villagers’ versions.
“The investigator was frequently asking me to tell them the ‘truth’, otherwise my bail will be cancelled and I will be taken on remand,” said the 17-year-old.
“Your one hand is seen broken. We will break your other limbs and then you will tell us the truth,” he quoted the official as saying.
“They wanted to know details including how we went to Keblarchar [on the night of the incident], what we were doing and so on,” he added.
Abdul Kader, father of Kamruzzaman Kanto, one of the ill-fated six, also went there yesterday. He said he was shocked at the behaviour of the committee members.
“They were apparently trying to label my son and other dead as robbers. They were giving more priority to the villagers,” he told The Daily Star.
The committee seemed to believe the versions of villagers and police that the youths went to the spot on a trawler to commit robbery, he said. “If the allegation is true why don’t they check the mobile phone logs of the dead and the injured?”
Kanto’s cousin Mariam Sultana Mitu accompanied Kader to the place where his son breathed his last. She alleged a policeman, who was with the probe committee, called her “the sister of a dacoit”.
The police authorities formed the four-member committee on July 21 to probe the death of six students and police role in the incident. Soon after its formation, it went to Amin’s home for his statement.
The Daily Star made several phone calls and sent texts to the committee chief, Mohammad Amir Uddin, deputy inspector general (DIG-admin) of police, for comments. He did not respond.
Sirajul Haque, assistant superintended of police of CID and also the investigation officer of the case, said two sides — villagers and families of the victims — are causing a delay in the probe by giving contradictory accounts of what had happened in Aminbazar that night.
He, however, claimed the facts behind the incident will be unearthed soon.
Courtesy of The Daily Star
