Unparalleled brutality
We are benumbed with shock at the brutal killing of a second-year Buet (Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology) student, Abrar Fahad, at the hands of Chhatra League members who had called him ostensibly for "questioning" regarding his possible involvement with Chhatra Shibir. This painful incident shows the nadir of depravity the Chattra League has reached in their lawlessness and couldn't-care-less attitude. The autopsy report of the Dhaka Medical College Hospital has clearly stated that Abrar experienced internal bleeding and excessive pain due to being beaten with cricket stumps and bamboo sticks. Where is the accountability of the BCL?
It is surprising that in a respectable institution like Buet, the student wing of the ruling party would set up a room that was reportedly known among the students as a "torture room", and the Buet administration did nothing about it. And it is equally hard to believe that a Facebook post would trigger such a violent reaction among the BCL, as would result in the death of a young person. It seems that to these depraved BCL members, human lives are of no value at all.
Only a few BCL members of Buet may have been involved in the killing of Fahad, but can those who have failed to control the wayward BCL members of the public universities in spite of repeated caution from the media, and the Buet administration who is responsible to enforce discipline in the campus but turned a blind eye to the repressive behaviour of the BCL, absolve themselves of their culpability in Fahad's death?
Comments of a responsible minister that one cannot just beat someone to death for having a different opinion should have been directed towards his own party apparatchiks and thrust in their minds and not the public, least of all to the parents to whom it sounds glib and hollow and lacking in empathy. We hope, as the said minister has assured, the law would be allowed to take its own course. A university campus should be the safest place for a student—not a place controlled by thugs and murderers. What we witnessed in Buet has not only tainted the name of the university, it has also sullied the achievements of the AL.
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