Cops helped mob in killing
Police helped the mob lynch 16-year-old Shamsuddin Milon at Tekerhaat in Noakhali on July 27, reveals an investigation of Ain O Shalish Kendra (ASK).
“Without any investigation police branded the boy as a robber to locals, who were already livid over a robbery in the area which took place the same morning,” Ahmed Faijul Kabir, senior investigator of ASK, told The Daily Star over the phone from Noakhali last night.
Faijul Kabir and Khorshed Alam, another senior member of ASK, conducted the investigation. They talked to locals, family members of the victim and police.
According to their findings, Milon, a resident of Char Fakira under Companyganj in Noakhali, was going to his grandparents' house in Birahimpur in Tekerhaat that morning.
On the way, he stopped near Char Kakra Academy High School to meet his cousin Chumki Akhter, a student of class six of the school. Milon waited for her along a pond in front of a mosque located just opposite to the school.
Suddenly, he was taken by surprise when locals started to chase him calling him a robber.
Earlier that morning people of Rahim Miar Tek, a nearby place, caught a gang of robbers red handed and beat three of them dead on the spot.
“They have tied me up thinking that I am a robber,” was the last few words Milon could tell his mother over the cellphone around 9:00am before he got disconnected.
Milon told the angry mob that he was innocent and went there to see Chumki but nobody listened to him.
Chumki also identified Milon as her cousin before the crowd but to no avail.
Ignoring their claims, Jamal Uddin, local Union Parishad member, handed over Milon to Companyganj police labelling him as a robber.
A police team led by Sub-Inspector Akramuddin Sheikh took Milon in a pick-up van. When the van reached Tekerhaat market, curious locals asked police about his offence.
Without a second thought, police told them that the boy was a robber though there is no case filed against him with any police stations.
Enraged, locals took the boy off the van and beat him dead and police silently watched the whole act, said the investigators of ASK.
ASK investigator Kabir said if police wanted to save the boy, they would have soothed the angry crowd.
Following the incident, the police team was suspended and the officer-in-charge of Companyganj Police Station was closed.
But no one has been arrested yet in connection with the case filed by the victim's mother, Kohinur Begum, accusing two locals and the policemen.
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