Investigators clueless for eight months

Nine-year-old Nudrat Akter was playing in front of their house in the afternoon of February 3. When afternoon rolled into evening, she was still not home. After hours of searching, the family filed a general diary (GD) with police.

Five days later, on February 8, the body of the girl was recovered from the hill, behind Chittagong Grammar School-2 on Surson Road. The family could not find any reason why she was killed. Nor could the police. In the last eight months, the situation remains the same -- police are yet to find what was behind the murder.

Nudrat, a first-grader of Mujaherul Ulum Jamia Madrasa, was the daughter of late Md Abul Kalam, a former Pubali Bank employee and a resident of Chattogram city's Bakalia area. Initially, police suspected that she might have been raped before being strangled by criminals, and her body was dumped in the hill to hide the crime.

The case is currently under investigation by the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) following a court order. 

Inspector Debasish Chowdhury of CID, the investigation officer (IO), told The Daily Star, “We just received the case a few days ago, and according to the post-mortem report, she was not raped, but strangled.”

“The motive behind the murder could not be cleared so far, and we are checking her family background and other issues,” he said.

Sub-inspector Himel Roy of Bakalia Police Station, the previous IO, said police tried but failed to unearth the clue. 

After the disappearance of Nudrat, her elder sister Roji Akter, 22, filed the GD with the police station on that night.

Roji said, “On that day [February 3] Nudrat went out of the house around 12:30pm and was playing in the street in front of our rented house 'Ma Manson'.”

“She was a very playful child. She often went out to ride on the back of rickshaw, but came back home in time. That day she did not come till 6:00pm. Later we searched for her everywhere but failed,” she said.

An emotion-choked Roji said, “She was murdered so brutally. She was just a child. We want capital punishment for the killers.”