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college student was found dead in a Gulshan flat in April.
Besides, the court would also seek an explanation as to why DNA samples were not collected to confirm whose child she was carrying. The post-mortem report confirmed she was 2-3 weeks pregnant.
Also, police did not seize enough CCTV footage of the house where Munia lived in Gulshan and the surrounding buildings to learn who went in and out of the apartment on the day of her death, April 26. The court will also seek an explanation on this.
The court directed the IO, PBI Inspector Golam Moktar Ashraf Uddin, to appear in person and explain these points after a petition was filed by Masud Salahuddin, the lead counsel for Nusrat Jahan Tania, Munia’s elder sister and sole guardian, who is the plaintiff in the case.
Meanwhile, former model Faria Mahabub Piyasha, the seventh accused who became the first person to be remanded across two cases over Munia’s death, was sent back to jail on Thursday after two days in remand. She was already in police custody for her involvement in an unrelated case.
The IO in his forwarding report to the court said Piyasha gave important information about the incident, which was being verified.
But according to Masud Salahuddin, when Tania as the plaintiff called the IO to enquire, he told her they were having difficulty managing women officers to interrogate Piyasha satisfactorily.
“So we entered a petition with the court seeking explanation on those four points,” Masud Salahuddin told UNB.
It may be mentioned that two of the accused, Ibrahim Ahmed Ripon, the owner of the flat where Munia lived and where she was found dead, and Sabrina Sobhan, Anvir’s wife, have secured anticipatory bail from the High Court, although the same was rejected in the case of Anvir.
When Anvir’s counsel Yusuf Hossain Humayun was arguing on his behalf during the hearing on September 29, the senior judge of the bench stopped him and said, “The autopsy report says there were multiple injury marks on the body. We have several other matters to hear. For now, we are granting bail to one of the accused [Sabrina].”
While the rejection of anticipatory bail does not necessarily compel the arrest of a person by the investigating agency, the reference to the injury marks in the court’s observation is said to be highly indicative of its own interpretation of the case.
As police continued to dither and over a week had passed, the order was passed summoning the IO to explain his actions, or inaction, on Wednesday (October 6) -- the same date when the investigation report of PBI in the case was due, but the IO did not even show up on the court premises.
Apart from the summons to the IO, November 2 has been set as new submission date for PBI’s investigation report.
Guards shoot dead six migrants at Libya detention centre: IOM
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Tripoli
Guards shot dead six migrants at an overcrowded Tripoli detention facility on Friday, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said, the latest violence against migrants following mass arrests in recent days.
“Shooting broke out and six migrants were killed in total. They were shot by the guards,” the UN agency’s Libya chief Federico Soda told AFP.
“We don’t know what triggered the incident today but it is related to overcrowding and the terrible, very tense situation” at the Al-Mabani facility in the capital, he said.
He added that at least 20 other migrants were wounded and that many more had escaped in the chaos.
An Interior Ministry official quoted by Libyan News Agency said the number of escapees could be around 2,000.
Videos online appeared to show hundreds of people, many of them minors, running away from the centre.
The killings came a week after sweeping raids in Tripoli, mostly targeting irregular migrants, left at least one person dead and 15 wounded, according to the UN Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL).
Doctors without Borders (MSF) said 5,000 migrants and refugees had been swept up in “violent mass arrests”, tripling the numbers detained in the city in just five days.
Libyan authorities had said the wave of detentions last Friday and Saturday were part of anti-drug raids on houses and makeshift shelters in Gargaresh, a poor suburb of Tripoli.
Soda said the heavily guarded Al-Mabani centre, which has a capacity of 1,000, had by Friday been housing 3,000 migrants, mostly from sub-Saharan Africa, around a third of them in the grounds outside the building.
Guards had fired into the air to control previous incidents during the week, he said.
“Their detention is arbitrary and indiscriminate,” he said.
“There are people there who have legal documents but they are stuck in the country.”
Videos posted on social media, some filmed from cars, appeared to show hundreds of people climbing over a metal fence and running across the road and down nearby streets.
One showed people running through the streets chanting “freedom! freedom!” in English. In another, a migrant said those fleeing were from “Somalia, Sudan, Egypt” and other countries.
AFP was unable to immediately verify the footage.
A witness told AFP he had seen around 500 migrants heading along a street near the centre.
An AFP reporter later saw at least 140 people who had apparently been recaptured by security forces and gathered under a bridge before being placed on a bus.
Particularly since its 2011 revolution unleashed years of violence and lawlessness, Libya has become a key departure point for tens of thousands of migrants hoping to reach Europe.
Official centres for migrants detained in the war-battered country are riddled with corruption and violence, including sexual assault, according to the United Nations and rights groups.
- ‘Severe physical violence’ -
A UN investigation said Monday that migrants face “arbitrary detention in secret prisons and unbearable conditions of detention”.
The UN’s refugee agency UNHCR had said earlier Friday that it was “increasingly alarmed about the humanitarian situation for asylum seekers and refugees in Libya”.
MSF said Wednesday that many of those captured in recent days were being held “in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions without access to sufficient food, water, shelter, or medical care”.
Many “reported experiencing severe physical violence, including sexual violence, during the raids on their homes”, it said.
Amnesty International said Friday that “armed men from militias and security forces affiliated with Libya’s Interior Ministry” had used “unlawful lethal force” including live fire in the round-up.
“Libyan forces have a harrowing record of subjecting refugees and migrants to unimaginable horrors with impunity,” said Diana Eltahawy, the group’s regional deputy director.