Two charged with negligent homicide

Police yesterday pressed charges against an engineer of Bangladesh Railway and its contractor in a case filed over the death of four-year-old boy Jihad who died after falling into a deep well last year.

Jihad fell into the well, some 40 yards from his house at Bangladesh Railway Colony in the capital, around 4:00pm on December 26 while playing with friends. His body was pulled put by a band of indomitable volunteers around 2:45pm the following day, around 15 minutes after the fire service called off a near 23-hour search in the 17-inch diameter abandoned shaft.

The accused Jahangir Alam, a senior sub-assistant engineer of the railway, is on the run while contractor Abdus Salam who installed the deep well in the colony, is now in jail.

Sub-inspector Abu Zafar of Shahjahanpur Police Station, also the investigation officer of the case, submitted the charge sheet to the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate's Court of Dhaka, showing 23 people as prosecution witnesses.

The investigation officer prayed to the court to issue an arrest warrant against Jahangir and order to confiscate his properties. 

The court will decide on May 5 whether the charges will be accepted against them in the case filed by Jihad's father Nasir Fakir.

The accident was the result of the contractor and the railway engineer's negligence as they left open the abandoned well, which was supposed to be kept sealed, said the complainant.

In the charge sheet, the IO said if the deep well was kept sealed, the boy would not have fallen into it, adding that the charges brought against the two were primarily proved and that they should be brought under trial.