Police claim suicide, family says murder

A youth Sumon Sheikh, 25, has died in police custody at the Hatirjheel police station in Dhaka. Police claimed the youth committed suicide. However, his family said that police beaten him to death. Angered by the incident, Sumon’s relatives and local people staged a demonstration in front of the police station on Saturday.

Sumon’s body was sent to the morgue of Shaheed Suhrawardy Medical College Hospital in the city on Saturday.

Zannat Akhter, wife of Sumon Sheikh, said that Sumon had been working at a distribution centre of Pureit, a water purifier manufacturing company of Unilever. He would get Tk 12,000 per month as salary. On Friday, police detained Sumon from his office and beat him up.

“Police demanded Tk 500,000 from us after arresting my husband. They killed him as we could not pay the money. Allah will judge the people who orphaned my boy,” said Zannat Akhter to Prothom Alo in front of the Hatirjheel police station with her son Raqib, 6, beside her.

Family members said they went to the police station right after being informed about the arrest. Police told them that Sumon would be presented before the court the next day. On the next morning they went to the police station again, but nobody informed them about Sumon’s death.

Azimul Haque, Dhaka Metropolitan Police’s (DMP) Tejgaon zone deputy commissioner told Prothom Alo, “Sumon was arrested on the basis of the information provided by three accused in a theft case filed by Pureit. The case was filed as some Tk 5.3 million was stolen from that office.”

Moslem Uddin Masud, the distributing manager of that office, filed a case with the Hatirjheel police in this regard on 15 August. Later, police arrested three employees of that office – Al Amin, Sohel Rana and Anik Hossain in connection with the theft.

Azimul Haque further said Sumon’s affiliation in the theft was confirmed after analysing the CCTV footage and the information given by the three arrestees. He was arrested from Rampura area of the capital on Friday afternoon. After the primary interrogation, police conducted a drive at his home at night and recovered Tk 313,700. After the drive, Sumon was taken to police custody at around 11.00pm.

Deputy commissioner Azimul Haque said, “Sumon was set to be presented before the court on Saturday morning. However, he hanged himself with the trouser he was wearing at around 3.32am Sunday. We have CCTV footage of the incident. We have shown the footage to Sumon’s relatives and his wife.

Police said on-duty sub-inspector (SI) Hemayet Hossain and constable Md Zakaria had been suspended on allegation of negligence while on duty. Police also have formed a three-member committee to investigate into the incident.

The committee members are - DMP’s additional deputy commissioner of Tejgaon industrial area Hafeez Al Faruque, additional deputy commissioner of Tejgaon zone Rubayet Zaman and assistant commissioner of Mohammadpur Zone Mujib Patwary.

Meanwhile, the main gate of the Hatirjheel police station was seen closed and Sumon’s relatives and hundreds of locals were protesting in front of the police station on Saturday night. Nobody, except the police and newspersons, were being allowed to enter there.

Speaking to Prothom Alo, local resident Urmi Akter said, “If anyone commits any crime, then he or she should be punished. But why did they (police) torture him in custody?”

She demanded an exemplary punishment of the policemen involved in this incident.

On condition of anonymity, a local resident said, “There are always some police members on duty at police stations. This is an example of extreme level of negligence in performing duties.”

Sumon’s body will be handed over to the family after the autopsy, saidthe police and the hospital sources.

Sumon Sheikh used to live with his family at a rented house in the Jheelkanon area in Rampura. He is from Darikandi in Nawabganj of Dhaka.