Workers leader tortured dead
The family of Aminul Islam, a workers leader who was found dead in Tangail on Thursday morning, alleged the law enforcing agencies tortured him to death and dumped the body in a far away place so that it remained unidentified.
Aminul went missing from Ashulia on the city outskirts on Wednesday and his body was found on the highway near Ghatail Police Station.
On Friday, Anjuman Mofidul Islam, a voluntary organisation, with the help of the police, buried him as an unidentified person in a graveyard following an autopsy at Tangail Sadar Hospital.
The 41-year-old was president of Savar and Ashulia units of Bangladesh Garment & Industrial Workers Federation.
He had been working at Bangladesh Centre for Workers' Solidarity, a non-government organisation for workers rights, in Ashulia, as an organiser since 2006.
Before that he served at a textile factory in the area.
Yesterday at noon, his body was exhumed from the grave in Tangail in the presence of a magistrate following a court order. On Sunday, his younger brother Rafiqul Islam applied to the court for the exhumation.
Aminul was buried at his family graveyard in Kaliakoir, Gazipur yesterday evening.
Seeing a photograph of Aminul in a national daily's Friday issue, Rafiqul Islam went to Ghatail Police Station the next day and identified his brother from the photo of the body and some clothes kept at the police station.
“We found several injury marks from waist to his [Aminul's] foot. His toes and his ankles were smashed,” he told The Daily Star.
“It's quite clear that he [Aminul] died of severe torture. Ordinary people cannot beat a man this way; it must be law enforcers,” Rafiqul alleged.
“Police picked up my brother three days before the BNP's grand rally on March 12 in Dhaka and later released him on a bond that he wouldn't go to the rally,” he said.
An intelligence agency also held and beat up Aminul on June 18, 2010, he added.
Mahbubul Haque, inspector (investigation) of Ghatail Police Station, told this correspondent that police had found marks of injuries on Aminul's body. Police filed a murder case in this connection on Thursday.
Abul Bashar, a sub-inspector of the police station, who is investigating the case, also confirmed the marks of injury on Aminul's legs.
He said police were yet to get the autopsy report, analysing which they would be able to say how Aminul had been killed.
Bangladesh Centre for Workers' Solidarity and Bangladesh Garment & Industrial Workers Federation at a press conference on Sunday demanded the arrest and punishment of the killers.
At the conference held at Jatiya Press Club, the leaders of the organisations also demanded compensation for Aminul's family.
Announcing several agitation programmes, they said they would be compelled to go for tougher movement if the killers were not punished.
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