Man dies in custody

A garment waste trader was allegedly tortured to death in the custody of Mirpur Model Police Station in the capital yesterday.
Victim Mahbubur Rahman Sujan, 35, was picked up along with his wife and five-year-old son from his home in Shankar in the wee hours of yesterday. Sub-Inspector Zahid of Mirpur Police Station had led the drive.
Zahid has been closed over the allegation, said Mohammad Jasimuddin, additional deputy commissioner (Mirpur zone) of DMP. Also, a three-member committee has been formed to investigate the death.   
Sujan died early in the morning, said Assistant Commissioner Sakhawat Hossain (Mirpur zone) of Dhaka Metropolitan Police.
Whether he died of torture or disease would be known after medical examination and investigation, Sakhawat said, adding that during the drive, police recovered 10 bullets and several yaba pills from Sujan's home.
Sujan's wife Lucy Begum said just after midnight someone knocked on the door and Sujan, assuming it was the police, hid in the storage space above the toilet.

After she opened the door, police led by SI Zahid started searching the flat.
At one point, they beat her up. When she was screaming in pain, Sujan came out of the attic. “Police then cuffed him and took all of us to the police station,” she said.
“At the police station they kept me in a separate room and started torturing my husband. I heard his screaming 'Save me ... they are killing me',” said Lucy.
She last heard him screaming around dawn as police released her and sent her to her parents' in Mirpur.
Later, police informed her of Sujan being in hospital. She came to know about his death around 12:30pm yesterday. She claimed that she saw several marks of injury in back of the head, face and hands of the body.
Lucy said Sujan's garment waste business was in Mirpur area. She claimed that he had been paying money, from Tk 5,000 to 25,000 a month, to local thugs and police. “SI Zahid is one who received money from my husband,” she said.
“Over the last one year Zahid was demanding Tk 1 lakh a month from him but the amount was too high for my husband and he was delaying over it,” said the widow.
“For this, Zahid harassed my husband several times. He even lodged a false arms case against my brother-in-law and put him in jail,” she claimed.
Sujan's body has been kept at the mortuary of Dhaka Medical College Hospital. Morgue sources said a board will be formed to perform an autopsy today.
The SI could not be reached for comments.
The police have filed two cases against Sujan yesterday, one with Mirpur Model Police Station and the other with Hazaribagh Police Station.