Truck workers confine cop

Truck workers yesterday confined a traffic sergeant and blocked two highways in Rajshahi city's Nawdapara area for two and a half hours for allegedly assaulting a truckers' union leader and trying to extort a truck driver.

Sergeant Sazzad had been confined to a roadside shack before a team of police came to the spot and rescued him some two hours later at 2:30pm.

Atikur Rahman, additional deputy commissioner (ADC) of the city traffic police, said around 12:00pm, two policemen, one of them a sergeant and the other a constable, intercepted a truck and found the driving licence and the registration of the vehicle expired.

When they seized the truck and were taking it to the police station, the truck workers took the sergeant into confinement, he told The Daily Star.

However, truck workers said police assaulted Farid Ali, a vice president of Rajshahi Truck Labourers Union, who was inside the truck with the driver, when he refused to give police Tk 200 in bribes.

The traffic policemen dragged Farid out of the truck and slapped him, said Mynul Islam, president of Rajshahi Truck Labourers Union.

He said labourers released Sazzad after senior police officials assured them of justice.

However, ADC Atikur Rahman denied both the allegations, saying police neither did ask for bribes nor did assault the truckers' leader.