Action if Jihad’s father harassed: IGP
Claiming Nasir Fakir was not harassed by police, the police chief said the lawmen picked him up only for questioning about his son Jihad's whereabouts in a cordial atmosphere.
"No atrocity took place to him…as human being, none can do so at that moment," said Hassan Mahmud Khandker, inspector general of police, adding that they would look into the matter to find out if any such incident had taken place.
He made the comment emerging from a meeting of National Committee on Militancy Resistance and Prevention at the home ministry in the capital.
State Minister for Home Asaduzzaman Khan who chaired the meeting also told reporters that he monitored the rescue operation staying at the spot almost the whole night.
"As rescuers informed me that there was no trace of human being inside the pipe, I conveyed it to the reporters," said Khan.
Defending picking up of Nasir by police, he said there was no bad intention in it and if any unpleasant incident had taken place in this connection, it would be regrettable.
BACKGROUND
Around three in the morning on Saturday when everyone was frantically trying to get Jihad out of the well, the police picked up Nasir from the spot and took him in for questioning.
They detained him for 12 agonising hours at Shahjahanpur Police Station. That was not all.
They allegedly threatened the worried sick father with dire consequences and asked questions like where he had tucked away his son.
Nasir told The Daily Star that policemen approached him when he was assisting rescuers at Shahjahanpur Railway Colony and sought 15 minutes of his time.
During his detention, he could know nothing about what was going on at the well or what was being done to rescue his little boy trapped at the bottom of a several hundred feet deep well.
Anything he said during the interrogation was instantly dismissed as lie by the interrogators.
Nasir was released around 3:00pm yesterday, only after the locals did what the authorities could not, recover Jihad from the well. It was done in just 15 minutes after the official rescue operation was called off with the claim that there was nothing inside the well.
Khadija Begum, mother of Jihad, accused police of torturing Nasir. "I have lost my son, and on the other hand police picked up my husband ... it was simply unbearable," she told The Daily Star at her Shahjahanpur home.
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