Police say they are trying to collect CCTV camera footage to identify the person who was driving the car, owned by an Awami League lawmaker’s wife, which ran over and killed a man in Dhaka’s Banani area Tuesday night.
They are, however, yet to take any steps to collect the CCTV footage of NAM Bhaban on the city’s Manik Mia Avenue, where the alleged driver of the Audi SUV, Noakhali 4 MP Mohammad Ekramul Karim Chowdhury’s son Shabab Chowdhury, took refuge after the incident.
The victim’s family filed a case with Kafrul police the next day, but police are yet to make any significant progress or any arrests even after two days have passed since the hit nd run accident on Tuesday night.
Police are also yet to impound the car.
On Thursday, Syed Mamun Mostafa, assistant commissioner of Dhaka Metropolitan Police’s Mirpur zone, said the footage from the NAM Bhaban premises, where Ekramul has a government-allotted flat as an elected lawmaker, were their secondary concern.
“We will collect the NAM Bhaban footage later,” he said, because: “We do not know for sure who was driving the car. So, first, we need to collect the CCTV footage of the spot where the accident took place.”
“But the problem is that there are not many houses in that spot, so we do not know whether we will find any footage.”
Fifty-year-old Salim Bepari, who worked as a driver at a private firm in Mohakhali DOHS, died on the spot in the hit and run incident near Setu Bhaban of the Bangladesh Bridge Authority, on Airport Road around 10pm Tuesday.
Media reports and social media posts suggest Shabab was
driving the car, an allegation rejected by his family, who also argued that one of their drivers was behind the wheels at the time of the incident.
Several eyewitnesses claimed to have followed Shabab and his SUV to NAM Bhaban while trying to stop him from fleeing the scene.
One of them, declining to be named, said a motorcycle-riding witness had managed to enter the premises. “But the MP’s son and his men threatened him before physically assaulting him and snatching his mobile phone which had images and video of the accident. The man was later forced out of the building premises.”
Asked why police have not impounded the vehicle in question, Assistant Commissioner Mostafa said: “Our main task is to identify the person who was on the driving seat. Seizing the car is not that big of a headache. We can do it anytime as it has been identified.”
However, sources from NAM Bhaban said, the Audi SUV is not there anymore as MP Ekramul’s men took it to some unknown place later on Tuesday night.
Mostafa said they were yet to talk to MP Ekramul and his family members about the matter.
According to police and Bangladesh Road Transport Authority, the car’s owner is the lawmaker’s wife, Kamrun Nahar Shiuli, who is also the chairman of Kabirhat upazila in Noakhali.
It was identified as her car after its licence plate, Dhaka Metro-Gha 13-7655, was found beside Salim’s lifeless body on the road.
Salim’s son-in-law, Md Arif Bhuiyan, said police were yet to inform them of updates in their case.
He said the traumatized family buried his father-in-law at a graveyard in the city’s Uttarkhan area on Wednesday.