A case stranger than fiction
That truth can be stranger than fiction has been nailed home by a report titled: "No strength left to seek justice" printed in this daily on December 15. The report narrates how a woman—whose son had died due to alleged torture sustained while in police custody in 2014—had to give up seeking justice for her dead son in the face of legal troubles of her own. The woman, Shaheda Begum, was arrested by the police earlier this year on charges of dealing drugs, and she had to spend six months in jail, where she suffered stroke twice.
Shaheda Begum claims she had been framed so that she stops pursuing the case filed after her son's death. And the case brought against the woman is not devoid of ambiguities either. According to case, the police—when conducting a drive at the woman's house, acting on a tip-off—arrested Shaheda along with four alleged drug dealers (two men and two teenage boys) and recovered 8,000 yaba pills when searching the males. This apparently the police had seized in front of three witnesses, including the complainant. However, the two civilians who had been cited as witnesses in the case against the 62-year-old woman disclosed to the reporter that they had only signed the documents the police had asked them to sign—they had not seen the yaba pills being recovered from the four. This was refuted by the DB SI who is also the complainant of the case. Shaheda also claimed that the police had taken Tk 7.5 lakh, which she got after selling a plot in the capital's Paikpara area. The police deny taking the money and there is no mention of it in the seizure list.
The case brings into light the inconsistencies—to say the least—that our law enforcing system is riddled with. At worst, the case point to the culture of corruption that is stripping our law enforcement of their integrity. In view of this, we would like to strongly urge the court to look into this case and deliver justice to the persecuted family of the victim. The culpable police officials must be brought to book and made accountable for their misdeeds.
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