Muntakim Saad

A day after Senior Assistant Superintendent of Police Anisul Karim was allegedly assaulted to death by its staff, the Mind Aid Psychiatry and De-Addiction Hospital in the capital’s Adabor was all but deserted yesterday.

From the outside, the three-storey building -- recently renovated and fitted with modern amenities -- looked serene, but from what the remaining kitchen staffers told this correspondent, there was turmoil within.

Inside, there are around 15 rooms. Two of those, situated at the corner, are soundproof rooms where “angry patients” were taken so that their “fury could be neutralised”.

Some staffers at the hospital said the rooms were akin to “soundproof torture cells”.

“All the patients who come here don’t behave the same way. Some behave violently, and are taken into those [soundproof] rooms…” said a member of the hospital’s kitchen staff, wishing not to be named.

The soundproof rooms are located on the ground floor and first floor of the hospital. Anisul was taken to the room on the first floor. The small air-conditioned room, with foam attached to the interior walls, is fitted with a closed-circuit television (CCTV) camera.