Days of suspense surrounding the abduction of seven people, including a city corporation ward councillor, reached its climax yesterday afternoon as six of their bodies had been recovered from the Shitalakkhya River.
Narayanganj police said local people first spotted the body of ward councillor Nazrul Islam in the river around 3pm at Bandar Upazila. Later, five other bodies were seen floating in the river.
As news spread, hundreds of people thronged the banks of the river and the ambience took an elegiac turn with the wailings of the family members.
Police recovered the bodies from the river and kept them on the bank where Nazrul’s brother Abdus Salam and his wife Selina Islam Beauty identified him. Lawyer Chandan Sarker’s body was identified by his daughter Shejuty.
The remaining four were identified as Nazrul’s chauffer Moniruzzaman Swapan and associates Liton and Tajul Islam, and Chandan’s chauffer Ibrahim. Nazrul’s associate Jahangir is still missing.
Akhter Morshed, OC of Bandar police station, said the bodies would be handed over to the families after autopsy.
The hands and legs of all the deceased were tied up. The dead bodies were all attached with heavy bricks and cement sacks. They might have been killed somewhere else and dumped into the river at least 24 hours before they had been recovered, Morshed said.
Local policemen said the corpses were all in wretched conditions; some had severed fingers, toes, limbs and even penis while one of them had a ripped-apart belly. They also said the victims might have gone through severe torture before dying.
Soon after news spread that Nazrul’s body had been found in the river, his supporters took to the streets and blockaded the Dhaka-Chittagong Highway in protest. They laid bricks and drums on the highway and set a filling station ablaze in the Mouchak area, halting traffic for hours.
A group of lawyers from Narayanganj observed work abstention for the third consecutive day, protesting the abduction and death of Chandan Sarker.
On Sunday, councillor Nazrul, his chauffer and three associates, and senior lawyer Chandan Sarker and his chauffer Ibrahim were abducted. Nazrul’s associate Jahangir is still missing.
Soon after, authorities withdrew Narayanganj deputy commissioner, police super, commander of local RAB and two OCs.
According to sources, councillor Nazrul, known as a supporter of the ruling Awami League, had 18 cases filed against him; at least 10 of those were murder cases. Even Nazrul’s chauffer Swapan and associate Tajul have several cases against them for various criminal offences.
However, senior lawyer Chandan Sarker is known as a well-mannered man with a clean image. When Nazrul was being abducted, Chandan’s car was reportedly also coming out of the court premises. The abductors might have thought that he saw the abduction, Chandan’s family members said.
Sajjadur Rahman, assistant police super of Narayanganj, told the Dhaka Tribune that he could not disclose anything for the sake of the ongoing investigation.
The situation in the city had been tensed with additional law enforcers deployed at various points in the city to avert any further untoward incident.
Protesters were still occupying the Dhaka-Narayanganj Highway until filing of this report last night.