Teacher killed in snatching: DB claims to have arrested ‘real snatchers’

The Dhaka Metropolitan Police’s (DMP) Detective Branch (DB) has announced the arrest of two people in connection with the death of headteacher Ranjila Parvin, who fell from a battery-powered rickshaw after snatchers tugged at her belongings in front of the Jatiya Sangsad Bhaban.

The DB has described the two arrested men as the “real snatchers” involved in the incident.

The DMP’s Media and Public Relations Department said in a text message today, Wednesday, that the two men had been arrested yesterday, Tuesday.

A press conference has been arranged at the DMP Media Centre on Minto Road in the capital at noon today, Wednesday to provide details of the arrests. DMP DB Additional Commissioner Md Shafiqul Islam will brief journalists at the press conference.

Earlier, the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) arrested three people in connection with the incident. The agency also said it had recovered a motorcycle allegedly used in the snatching. However, questions were raised about the two people arrested and the motorcycle recovered.

DMP DB Tejgaon Division Deputy Commissioner Ziauddin Ahmed said this time the “real offenders” had been arrested. He told Prothom Alo that the two people seen on CCTV cameras during the snatching had been arrested.

They were wearing the same clothes they had been seen wearing in the footage, he said. The belongings of the deceased teacher were also recovered from them. Details will be disclosed at the press conference, he added.

At around dawn on 29 August, Ranjila Parvin, 56, headteacher of Bagbari Girls Government Primary School in Gabtali upazila of Bogura, was killed after being pulled onto the road by snatchers in front of the South Plaza of the Jatiya Sangsad Bhaban. She had come to Dhaka with her husband for medical treatment.

After getting off a bus at Kalyanpur bus terminal early that morning, she and her husband were travelling by battery-powered rickshaw to a hospital when two snatchers riding a motorcycle tugged at the bag she was carrying in her hand in the Jatiya Sangsad Bhaban area.

She was thrown from the rickshaw and suffered a severe head injury. She was taken to hospital, where physicians declared her dead.

Ranjila’s husband, Abdul Matin, filed a murder case with Sher-e-Bangla Nagar police station, naming himself as the complainant.