A 16-year-old boy attending to his sick father was mugged at gunpoint inside Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH) despite the presence of armed Ansar personnel and coverage by closed-circuit television (CCTV).
Hospital authorities said they had located the CCTV footage of the mugging but the victim said the picture was hazy and he was not able to clearly identify the mugger.
On Sunday evening, an armed man stole Tk1000 from Shafiqul Islam, the 16-year-old son of a patient at the hospital, at gunpoint from the second floor of the hospital.
Shafiq, from Dorbeshnandi village under Araihazar police station in Narayanganj, is a student of class ten at Gopaldi High School.
He told the Dhaka Tribune that his father Danesh Mia had been receiving treatment in ward 217 for the last one and a half months.
Shafiq said a 40-year-old man in a red t-shirt started chatting with him near the ward. At one point, when they were in a deserted spot in front of the lift, the man pointed a gun at him and said, “Give me everything you have and don’t make a sound.”
Shafiq handed over Tk1000. The mugger then told Shafiq not to shout or else he would shoot.
Patients of the biggest government hospital in the capital said they were afraid after news of the mugging spread through the wards.
According to hospital authorities, some 155 Ansar officials work at the DMCH 1 and DMCH 2 premises.
Authorities said the hospital is covered by 54 CCTV cameras. The hospital also has a police outpost which includes staff from different intelligence agencies, authorities said.
One DMCH staff member, who asked not to be named, told the Dhaka Tribune that muggings and robberies occur at the hospital because no one had been appointed to monitor the CCTV system.
DMCH Deputy Director Mushfiqur Rahman when asked about this said: “We have failed to continuously man the monitors because we have other work to do.”
“Although we wish to appoint someone to man the CCTV system, we have failed because there is no scope to do so,” he said. About the low picture quality of the CCTV footage, he said the authorities were working to improve it.
Shirajul Islam, officer-in-charge of Shahbagh police station, told the Dhaka Tribune that a general diary had been filed with the police station regarding the mugging and that the police were investigating the matter.