Online activist attacked in Ghatail
An online activist was admitted to a hospital with severe injuries on Monday after he was allegedly beaten up by a gang of attackers for protesting a woman's death caused by a snapped electric wire in Ghatail.
Mehedi Hasan Manju, 35, from Alu Pakutia village in the upazila, was admitted to Dhaka Medical College Hospital with a broken arm and several other injuries in his body.
The woman, Fuljan Begum of the village, died from electrocution on March 28 when she came in contact with a live electric wire that had snapped during a storm and had been lying on her paddy field for three days, said Mehedi, who is an author and runs online health magazine Dehoghori.
A group of middlemen recently brokered power connections from a contractor with PDB (Power Development Board) for households and irrigation pumps in the village after collecting over Tk 7 lakh -- Tk 2,700 for each household and Tk 7,000 for each irrigation pump, he said.
Fuljan Begum died as the new power lines were not installed properly and “the brokers started to threaten me as I protested the death caused by the faulty electric line through my writings on Facebook and blogs,” alleged Mehedi, a former leader of Chhatra Union at Dhaka University.
"Of the brokers, Mostofa and Azmat of the village along with 8 to 10 others attacked me with sticks on Monday when I went to my village home from Dhaka."
Contacted, Ashraful Islam, officer-in-charge (investigation) of Ghatail Police Station, said Mehedi's father Nurul Islam filed a case the same day with the police station accusing seven identified, including Mostofa and Azmat, and three to four unidentified individuals.
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