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Abrar was Mehedi Hasan Robein, organising secretary of Buet BCL.
“After Robein started it, Anik joined him. At one stage of the relentless beating, Anik went out [of the room] but came back soon afterwards. He again struck Abrar [with a stump] who then lost his consciousness,” a police officer told The Daily Star.
The others who led the torture are Meftahul Islam Zion and Ifti Mosharraf Shakal, the officer said wishing anonymity.
The grisly murder at Sher-e-Bangla Hall of Buet sometime between 7:30pm Sunday and 2:30am Monday, sparked widespread protests at different universities.
Investigators think, 23 or 24 Buet students were involved in the killing, police said.
Meanwhile, detectives yesterday picked up Buet student Shakhawat Iqbal Ovi from old Dhaka. An officer said he was inside the room where Abrar was beaten up for hours.
The same BCL group had beaten up Shakhawat around six months ago and fractured his hand, said the source.
RASEL CALLED THE POLICE
Receiving a call from Buet BCL General Secretary Mehedi Hasan Rasel, Chawkbazar Police Station sent a team led by a sub-inspector to Sher-e-Bangla Hall around 2:15am Monday.
Buet campus doctor Masuk Elahi said he went to the hall around 3:00am after receiving phone calls from students and found Abrar dead.
“It seemed to me that Abrar died about an hour or an hour and a half before I had reached the hall around 3:00am,” Masuk said.
Sub-inspector Delwar Hossain, who went to the hall with a constable and a Ansar member, said after he reached, Rasel told him that he had informed the hall provost and asked him to wait in the reception room until the provost arrived.
Delwar said after waiting for around 45 minutes, he again called Rasel from a hall security guard’s phone.
“When Rasel came, I asked what had happened. When he said a Shibir man has been caught and beaten up, I wanted to go upstairs. But Rasel said there was no need [for me] to go inside,” Delwar told The Daily Star.
The SI also said he asked Rasel to allow him to take the injured student to a hospital, but Rasel said the student suffered minor injuries and they would take care of him once the provost arrived.
Prof Zafar Iqbal Khan, who was the hall provost, resigned yesterday. He didn’t answer his phone when this correspondent called him.
The SI said he then informed the matter to the inspector and left the hall.
Around 4:00pm, Chawkbazar police received a call and were informed that a Buet student had been killed. The same team from the police station went to the hall and saw that the provost, physician, student adviser and Buet’s security personnel were there.
Police sources said Rasel and other students involved with the killing actually tried to buy time to destroy evidence.
Asked why police had not entered the hall despite receiving information that a student was injured, a senior officer of Lalbagh division of Dhaka Metropolitan Police said without the consent of the provost or at least a house tutor, police do not enter a public university hall.
Police officials said even after Abrar’s death, Rasel and Shakal seemed quite nonchalant. In the morning, they hung around the hall and smoked cigarettes while senior police officials and hall authorities had gathered.
TALES OF BRUTALITY
“He [Abrar] is pretending. [He] can be beaten up for two more hours,” Anik was telling when the second-year student of Buet was left on the staircase between the ground floor and the first floor after being beaten up for hours.
Another attacker, Zion made a similar comment, asking his fellows to keep Abrar on the floor.
“He is pretending. Keep him here,” Zion said.
Some students, who witnessed the last moments of Abrar before his agonising death, yesterday narrated the brutality of the attackers to the agitating students in front of the Shaheed Minar of Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology.
“I could not sleep for the last three nights as I saw him [Abrar] in that condition. I could not save him,” Kazi Mohiuddin Alamgir, a student of electrical and electronic engineering, said in a loudspeaker.