Dhaka: A court in northeastern Sylhet on Monday gave police five days to interrogate a man suspected of taking part in the killing of a 13-year-old boy.
Rajon, the teenage vegetable vendor, was killed by a group of people who claimed he was involved in the theft of a rickshaw van.
A video clip showing the boy being brutally tortured to death by the mob in the city has gone viral on the internet, and sparked outrage in Bangladesh.
“We brought him [suspect Muhih Alam] to our custody for interrogation in line with the court order,” Akhtar Hussain, the officer in charge of the local police station, said adding Alam was one of the four major suspects who were found to be directly involved in the killing of the child.
He said a second suspect was detained on Monday and a manhunt was underway for the other “culprits”, including Alam’s younger brother Kamrul Islam, who visibly took the main role in beating Shaikh Mohammad Samiul Alam Rajon to death.
The group had tied the 13-year-old boy to a pole and continued to beat him for nearly 30 minutes until he died from injuries on July 8. One of the suspects filmed the fatal assault and uploaded the video on his Facebook page.
The Facebook video was creating a firestorm on social media. as it showed how the boy screamed for help, cried for water and begged for his life while the killers laughed and jeered at him.
In the footage the boy is initially heard saying “don’t beat me mama [uncle] with this [stick]. My bones will break” while in his last minutes he said “I’m going to die, somebody please save me”.
At one point when he said he wanted some water to drink, the killers tauntingly asked him if he would like an “energy drink” or “chilled beer” while one of the men kept beating the child on the legs, hands and shoulders.
The people in the neighbourhood chased and caught Alam while the rest of the group fled the scene, after trying to dump the body secretly in a secluded place in the town.
Hundreds of people including women and children took to the streets in Sylhet carrying posters of Rajon and demanding exemplary punishment to his killers as protest mounted demanding the maximum punitive actions against the killers.
Rajon’s mother, Lubana Akhtar, joined the rally, carrying her son’s photo and cried out in agonies as she demanded justice.
People in the neighbourhood said the boy used to vend vegetables at the local kitchen market while his father, a rent-a-car driver was out elsewhere on trips.
“We are mobilising lawyers so none of them appear in the defence of the killers ... the law says everyone deserves legal defence but there are cases (like this) where this principle of the law does not apply,” said leading rights activist Salma Ali appearing in a TV talk show last night as the incident visibly infuriated her.
Police filed a murder case on complaint lodged by Rajon’s father accusing Muhit and his expatriate younger brother Kamrul Islam, who recently came home on a leave, alongside their accomplices Ali Haider and Moyna Mia.
“We have also identified few other culprits, but would like to keep their names undisclosed for now ... one of them is Esmail Hussain Ablus — a cousin of Alam and Muhit — who we arrested this morning,” officer in charge of Jalalabad police station Akhtar Hussain told Gulf News as he was reached by phone from Dhaka.