Cops walk the criminals' way

This mother lost her baby born a month after she endured brutal physical and sexual torture in the city's Bhashantek slum. Her face has been blurred in the photo. Photo: Anisur Rahman

With much of the evidence destroyed, facts distorted and identities manipulated by police, the physical and sexual assaults of 11 members of a family in a Bhashantek slum early this year sounds like an implausible story. 

Released on bail, all the nine masterminds of the attack now roam boastfully about the labyrinthine slum, thanks largely to the police inaction. 

Mamun, Bablu, "Langra" Badal and Dulal are among the released masterminds who led a group of about 20 local goons to carry out the February 11 assault.

Since his release in March, Badal has been accused in four fresh cases. Mamun already faces five cases for drug dealing while Bablu is wanted in a dozen of cases, The Daily Star has gathered.  

On the day, the gang forced nine members of the family in a room, including six women, undressed them all and assaulted them for about 15 hours since morning till about 11:00pm. Two other male members of the family were beaten up outside the room.

It all happened for six tolas of gold that was alleged to have been stolen by a member of the family.  

In the assault, the gang used sticks, cricket stumps and metal strings.

The culprits even took photos and videos of the victims and threatened to circulate those if the gold ornaments were not given to them, despite their insistence that they did not know anything about the gold. 

One of the victims was an expecting mother and another a teenage girl.

But shockingly, the only bits of evidence mentioned in the charge sheet by the police are a piece of rope and four pieces of bloodstained clothes of one victim.

“Evidence was aplenty as we saved every piece of them,” said a victim. “All of us bled after the torture. They hit me in the head with a machete.”

The machete she was hit with and the scarf she used to wrap around her head to stop bleeding are "missing".

Each of the victims' dress was stained with blood. But neither those nor the ropes used to tie their hands and legs are mentioned on the evidence list.

The charge sheet also does not mention the sticks, the metal strings and the cricket stumps used in the torture.

The makeshift rack contains parts of sets of bloodstained dresses submitted to the police as evidence of torture. Police allegedly destroyed them. Photo: Star

“A few days after the incident, I carried to the police station a sack full of evidence [mostly bloodstained clothes]," said Rashed, 11, himself a victim.

He also cited television reports showing multiple pieces of bloodstained evidence.  

It was Rashed who snatched the machete from Mamun by biting his hand and ran away. He wrapped it in a piece of paper and hid it somewhere in Dewanpara and later gave it to the police.

His aunt, who was hit in the head with a machete, said she gave to the police six sets of bloodstained dresses of her daughter alone. The girl bled for three days after being sexually abused with cricket stumps.

Investigating officer Golam Nabi Sheikh admitted to The Daily Star that he failed to recover the photographs and the videos of the stripped men and women taken by the attackers on their cell phones.

Asked why did not produce all the evidence before the court, he said, “It's foolish to keep piles of evidence for proving the same crime.”

But most shocking of all is perhaps the fact that the charge sheet does not specify the number of victims.

Talking to this newspaper last month, Nabi, who submitted the charge sheet, said there were only two victims -- S and S (their full names withheld).

But the victims' statements and news reports following the brutal incident make it clear that at least 11 people were assaulted that day.

They include Subel, a relative of the victims and, ironically, also a member of the same gang.            

The 18-year-old has long been an accomplice of the perpetrators, who trained him up to be a robber since his childhood, ignoring pleas from the family.

The attack came after Subel allegedly stole some gold ornaments but did not share those with the gang. He denied stealing any ornaments, but upon torture by the gang for two hours that morning he said he kept those in one of his relatives' house, just to save himself from further torture. It was then that the gang began torturing his family members.

Asked why he dropped the name of the complainant of the case, J (full name withheld), herself a victim, Nabi said, “J and S are not two different persons, rather two names of the same woman.”

But they are two different girls, cousins, in fact. And while J is married, S is single and lives with her parents. J's husband was also beaten up.

Pressed, Nabi, also officer-in-charge of Bhashantek Police Station, eventually raised the number of victims to three, rejecting right away that there were 11 victims, as found in an investigation by this paper.

The Daily Star is withholding the identities of the women given the social stigma associated with it. But among them are a middle aged couple, their daughter, sisters and in-laws, two nieces and a nephew.

When seven victims' names backed by evidence were shared with Nabi, he said, “Still, you cannot give more than seven names, can you?”