2 die as cop ploughs bus thru crowd
A police officer not authorised to drive took the steering of a bus and ploughed through a crowd, killing two men and injuring at least three others in the capital's Gulistan yesterday afternoon.
Following an argument with the bus driver, Assistant Sub-Inspector Emadul Haque asked him to get off and then began to drive the otherwise empty bus, witnesses said.
After going about 100 metres on Gulistan Road around 2:45pm, he violently swerved the bus to the left, ploughing through a crowd and damaging motorcycles and rickshaws. He then steered to the right and hit the guard rail of a footpath, they added.
Police officers are not supposed to drive seized vehicles; they are supposed to get the vehicles towed, said multiple traffic police officers.
Paltan police detained Emadul after the incident.
This correspondent talked to over two dozen individuals present at the time on the road, one of the most crowded in the capital. All of them gave similar accounts of the event.
They said the police officer in uniform stopped a bus of Sraban Transport near Kaptan Bazar Complex and forced the driver to get off the vehicle. There was no passenger on the vehicle at the time.
They added that the officer said he was going to drive the bus to Sergeant Ahad Police Box. However, several policemen of the facility The Daily star had contacted said they would not comment on the matter.
Abdul Ahad, deputy commissioner at Motijheel Division of Dhaka Metropolitan Police, said a case was being filed against the errant officer.
Before the incident, the actual driver of the vehicle caused an accident in the area, injuring a policeman, the DC said, adding that the driver and his assistant fled the scene abandoning the vehicle.
ASI Emadul tried to drive the bus to a safer place, but he lost control of the vehicle, the DC added.
One of the victims, Shukkur Mahmud, 58, came back to the country two and a half months ago after living in the USA for 34 years. He was a US citizen, grieving family members said.
He came to the capital from his home in Narayanganj yesterday morning, the victim's elder brother Golam Mostafa told reporters.
Shukkur was pronounced dead when taken to Dhaka Medical College Hospital.
The other victim, Raisul Kabir Tusher, 35, died at the hospital around 5:30pm. He was an employee of Dream Plus International, a garments accessories company, his colleague Zahidul Islam told reporters.
Tusher was returning to his office in Paltan from Sadarghat when he was crushed by the vehicle, Zahidul added.
He was a resident of Dakkhin Jurain.
Sixty-year-old Ramzan Ali, a rickshaw puller, said he was injured and his rickshaw was badly damaged.
He was seen standing for over an hour with his broken rickshaw in front of Sergeant Ahad Police Box, which is quite close to where the incident took place.
He said he demanded compensation, but no one responded to him.
The other injured are Anwar Hossain, 33, and Abdur Rashid, 65.
An officer-in-charge of a police station in the capital, requesting anonymity, said, "The rule is that police officers will call for a tow truck and tow the vehicle to a safer place. Even if an officer has a driving licence, they are not allowed to drive a seized vehicle."
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