CCTV footage yet to offer anything
The area in Uttara where a Garo woman was dropped off after she was gang-raped in a running microbus on Thursday night was supposed to be covered by four CCTV cameras installed by Dhaka Metropolitan Police.
Police, however, said they have found nothing from the cameras in support of their investigation into the incident.
“No footage could be collected from those cameras,” said Khandker Lutful Kabir, deputy commissioner (Gulshan division) of DMP.
The cameras that face four separate directions have been placed in the middle of the Jasimuddin intersection. They each cover 100 metres area and always remain operational, according to a notice written below the cameras.
Kabir also said the quality of the CCTV cameras is poor and they found it hard in the past to understand movement of vehicles recorded on those cameras during the night-time.
Asked whether the cameras were functional on Thursday night, Iqbal Hossain, deputy commissioner of DMP's Uttara division, skirted a direct answer and said he would look into the matter.
Three days into the heinous gang-rape, police are yet to identify the microbus and the five rapists, let alone arrest them.
According to the victim's sister, the 21-year-old woman was dropped off in front of a footwear shop on Jasimuddin road around 11:30 Thursday night. She was forcibly bundled into the microbus from Kuril highway area around 9:30pm that night.
Police suspect that after picking the woman, the microbus used the Airport road to drive north and reach Uttara.
Locals in Uttara said a vehicle must come under the surveillance cameras, installed by the DMP, to reach Jasimuddin road from Kuril via the Airport road.
DC Lutful Kabir, however, claimed that cops were on the “right track” despite no visible development into the investigation.
“Hopefully we will be able to do something in a short while,” he said.
The investigators have already collected footage from four cameras installed at the entrance of Jamuna Future Park, where the 21-year-old girl works as a sales representative. They scrutinised the footage of the last two to three days but found nothing significant, said DC Lutful.
Police are now scrutinising footage of the last two weeks recorded on those cameras that might take some time, he added.
According to police, the Jamuna Future Park footage might reveal the identity of one of the rapists, who posing as a customer at her workplace, struck up a conversation with her two days before the incident.
The man had enquired about when she usually left work.
Meanwhile, the victim girl who was at the One-stop Crisis Centre of Dhaka Medical College Hospital has been taken to Tejgaon's victim support centre yesterday, said Inspector Sazzad Hossain, investigating officer of the case.
The DMP yesterday formed a three-member body to supervise police investigation into the gang-rape case, according to a DMP press statement.
PROTEST CONTINUES
Meanwhile, protests have been pouring in from all tiers of society demanding arrest of the perpetrators and their exemplary punishment.
Several organisations yesterday held demonstration programmes in the capital.
The law enforcement agencies must be accountable to people if they fail to provide security to the country's women, said eminent rights activist Sultana Kamal.
She was addressing a programme arranged jointly by 30 organisations in front of the National Museum.
Sanjib Drong, general secretary of Adivasi Forum, said, "It is the accused who should be thoroughly questioned and remanded. But the victim should not be harassed with too many questions."
He also demanded the government ensure the victim's full security.
Several left-leaning organisations including Communist Party of Bangladesh, Bangladesh Chhatra Union and Udichi Shilpi Goshthi, held a separate protest rally in front of the Jatiya Press Club yesterday.
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