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Shariatpur youth mauled
FROM PAGE 14
Police on September 13 registered his statements as a regular case under Torture and Custodial Death (Prohibition) Act against five to six unknown persons.
After investigation, sub-inspector Ibrahim Patwary of Palong Model Police Station, on November 16 submitted a charge sheet to the Chief Judicial Magistrate’s Court of Shariatpur, stating that four DNC personnel tortured Nur Alom in custody.
The four DNC personnel are Apurbo Biswas, assistant sub-inspector Tofail Ahmed and sepoys Prokash Roy and Priyanka Ghoramy.
The abuse started with Apurbo and Prokash hitting Nur Alom in a side alley at Ganganagar Bazar in Shariatpur, according to the charge sheet.
Nur Alom was taken to the house of one Sumon Robi Das adjacent to the Ganganagar Bazar, where Apurbo and Tofail beat him up with plastic pipes and injured various parts of his body.
Prokash hit Nur Alom’s left eye so hard that it caused a blood clot, while Priyanka verbally abused him and hit him on his cheeks.
“The accused, despite being members of the law enforcement agencies, kept the complainant in their custody at the time of the arrest, and inhumanly tortured him physically and mentally,” the charge sheet added.
The charge sheet lays bare the extent of the brutality of the accused and their crimes, Shahidul Islam Sajib, the victim’s lawyer, told The Daily Star.
“After this, the accused cannot continue their service in the DNC legally.”
Anticipating a premature end to their employment, three of the accused went to Nur Alom’s house on Friday and pressed him to withdraw the case, according to Sajib.
“At that time, some 20-25 people, including local influential political leaders, accompanied the accused. Now my client is feeling insecure,” the lawyer said, quoting Nur Alom.
Contacted, Tofail acknowledged they went to Nur Alom’s house for an out-of-court settlement.
“But could not reach a solution,” he added.
Harun Mollah, a former ward member of Shaulpara Union Parishad in Shariatpur Sadar Upazila, told The Daily Star yesterday that he along with some other local people went to Nur Alom’s house on Friday to patch up the sad episode.
“The DNC officials apologised to Nur Alom. The administration people now realised that they filed the narcotics case based on wrong information,” he added.
THE NARCOTICS CASE
On October 19, DNC pressed charges against Nur Alom in the narcotics case.
The charge sheet says Tofail filed the case, while Apurbo investigated it. Prokash has been named in the charge sheet as a witness.
In the charge sheet, Apurbo said the DNC men searched Nur Alom’s body before three local men -- Alomgir Madbar, Maruf Madbar and Lutfor Chowdhury -- and recovered 52 yaba pills from his possession.
However, the three men on September 14 told The Daily Star that the DNC officials did not recover any yaba pill from the 21-year-old.
“Soon after I heard the incident, I along with some people rushed to the spot. There I saw the narcotics in one of the DNC staff’s hands. The DNC men told me to give my address and I did,” Alomgir said.
Lutfor and Maruf echoed the same.

Four Syrian soldiers killed in Israeli ‘air aggression’
REUTERS, Damascus
Four Syrian soldiers were killed and one wounded in Israeli “air aggression” on some military posts in the coastal and central region of Syria yesterday morning, Syrian state news agency SANA reported.
Syrian air defences countered the attack, which came from the Mediterranean Sea side and also caused material damage, the agency said.
“At approximately 6:30 this morning (0330 GMT), the Israeli enemy carried out an air aggression over the Mediterranean Sea, from the direction of Banias, targeting some posts in the central and coastal region,” the agency quoted a military source as saying.
The Israeli military declined to comment.
Israel has been mounting attacks in Syria for years against what it has described as Iranian and Iran-backed forces that have deployed there during the fighting that began more than a decade ago.
Regional and intelligence sources say Israel has in recent months intensified strikes on Syrian airports and air bases to disrupt Iran’s increasing use of aerial supply lines to deliver arms to allies in Syria and Lebanon, including Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah.
Israeli missiles this month hit a major air base in Syria’s Homs province, killing two servicemen and injuring three. Military sources said the air base, at Shayrat, was recently used by the Iranian air force.