BUET murder motive not clear yet: Police

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Bangla Tribune Report
Published : 17:24, Oct 10, 2019 | Updated : 21:55, Oct 10, 2019

Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) Additional Commissioner Monirul Islam addressing a media call on Thursday (Oct 10).

The motive behind the killing of Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) student Abrar Fahad is not yet clear, said the police.

“It’ll take us a few more days to identify the motive,” Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) Additional Commissioner Monirul Islam said while addressing a media call on Thursday (Oct 10).

“Finding out the motive is central to our investigation. We are trying to find out whether he was taken for the purpose of murder or some other intention,” he said.

He declined to make any more comments on the motive saying that most of what has been revealed initially is purely circumstantial.

Responding to queries on whether Abrar was indeed killed due to his Facebook status or for his alleged affiliation with Jamaat-e-Islami’s student wing Islami Chhatra Shibir, he said that these cannot be ruled out. “There might be other reasons as well.”

He said that the police had been able to detain the 10 suspects well before their name was officially filed in the case documents.

“Even after the case documents were prepared, we were alert and soon arrested five more suspects,” he said.

On the arrest of Bangladesh Chhatra League’s BUET unit leader Amit Shah, he said, “During primary investigation we thought that he was not at the scene. But he was either directly or indirectly linked and hence he was arrested.”

Speaking about who were involved with torturing Abrar, Monirul Islam said that they still don’t have a clear picture of it.

“The suspects who have been arrested want to confess but the information provided by them is being probed and analysed,” he said.

On the role of the police patrolling the university premises, he said, “They didn’t have intelligence that someone was being beaten up inside.”

He added that the patrol police waited but were told from inside the hall that everything was alright.

Abrar, a second-year student of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, was found dead in the stairway of the Sher-e-Bangla dormitory in the early hours of Monday (Oct 7).

He was beaten to death reportedly by the university BCL leaders for his Facebook status regarding the instruments signed between India and Bangladesh and for his alleged involvement with Islami Chhatra Shibir, Jamaat-e-Islami’s student wing.

Quoting the students of the dormitory, police said that he was called up from his room at 7:30pm on Sunday (Oct 6).

Later, his body was found on the first-floor stairway of the hall at 2am on Monday and post mortem reports showed that he was beaten of death.

His father filed a murder case against 19 people with Chawkbazar police station on Monday evening and BCL later expelled 11 of its members permanently from the organization.

The incident sparked nationwide protests with protesters demanding justice for Abrar and capital punishment for the killers.

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