6 beaten to death

On Keblarchar shoal in Aminbazar lie clothes and a sandal of the students killed in a mob beating there on the night of Shab-e-Barat. Saifuddin Md Aminur Rahim, left, father of one of the victims Shamam, waits for his only son's body at DMC morgue yesterday.Photo: Palash Khan

Six students were bludgeoned to death by a mob of several hundred villagers in Aminbazar on the outskirts of the capital on Shab-e-Barat early yesterday.
The reason behind the attack, which also left another person injured, remains unclear. But locals and police claimed the youths were robbers.
Al Amin, the lone survivor who suffered injuries all over his body, said they went to Keblarchar in Bardeshi village of Aminbazar to smoke cannabis.
Keblarchar is known as a hot spot for drug trade.
Of the six, Towhidur Rahman Palash, Kamruzzaman Kanto and Ibrahim Khalil were students of Bangla College, Shams Rahim Shamam of Maple Leaf International School, Tipu Sultan of Tejgaon College and Sitaf Jabi Munif was of Bangladesh University of Business and Technology.
The bodies were sent to Dhaka Medical College morgue by Savar police in the morning and handed over to families in the afternoon following autopsies.
Morgue sources said the six were battered to death and two of the bodies bore marks of injuries from sharp weapons.
Aged between 16 and 22, they hailed from Darussalam, Kalyanpur and Shyamoli, a few kilometres off Aminbazar.
Families claimed the seven had no criminal records, but could not say why they went to the area.
Protesting the killings, several hundred locals of Darussalam blocked the road from Kalyanpur to Technical Intersection for one and a half hours from 12:30pm yesterday and vandalised two buses.
Al Amin, 18, a sales representative of a juice company, said he along with his six friends went to Aminbazar firstly by a rickshaw-van and then to Keblarchar on foot.
"We were walking along the riverbank at Keblarchar around 1:30am. All of a sudden, we saw a group of people come towards us with torches in their hands," he told reporters at Savar Thana Health Complex where he took treatment.
The people, without saying a word, started beating them shouting “dacoit, dacoit”.
While the mob was battering the seven, an elderly person asked all not to beat Al Amin, he said when his father Khabir Bepari met him at the health complex.
Al Amin was being interrogated by Savar police yesterday.
Following an alarming rise in robbery and snatching, locals formed teams to patrol the area, carrying sticks and sharp weapons.
In the last one month, five robberies took place in the village while criminals frequently forced sand traders in the region to pay extortion, locals said.
"We saw a trawler with several people come to the sand-filled place around 1:30pm [yesterday]. Suspecting them robbers, we instantly passed the information to other teams over mobile phones," said a middle-aged man, who is a member of one of the teams.
On instructions of local leaders, they allowed the gang to enter deep into the village and announced over loudspeakers of mosques that the robbers had intruded, he said, preferring anonymity.
This prompted the villagers, many of who were on prayers of Shab-e-Barat, to attack the youths.
The man also said the number of robbers was 16 to 17 and the all but the seven managed to flee in the trawler in the direction they had come.
Under mob assault, the youths kept saying that they were students and residents of Darussalam area, said several other villagers, who were on patrol that night.
The group requested all to check their identities but the mob could not be restrained.
On information, police reached the spot and managed to rescue only Al Amin.
"Receiving a wireless message, we rushed to the spot and saw around 500 to 600 locals beating the youths. When I dispersed the mob, I found the six already dead," said Sub-Inspector Hares Shikder.
Police found four machetes beside the bodies, said Mahbubur Rahman, officer-in-charge of Savar Police Station.
Two cases--one by a local sand trader Abdul Malek and the other by police--were filed in connection with the incident.
Malek in his case statement said those killed in the mob beating were robbers and four of them extorted Tk 5 thousand from him earlier that night.
Sub-Inspector Anwar Hossain of the police station filed a murder case accusing five to six hundred unidentified villagers of the killings.
Savar police said nobody was arrested any of the accused as of today 1:00am.
Mizanur Rahman, Dhaka district superintendent of police, said a gang of 14 to 15 came to Keblarchar and took away Tk 5 thousand from sand trader Abdul Malek.
Later, when they made an attempt of robbery locals chased and caught seven of them. "The rest managed to flee.”