Soon after State Minister for Home Affairs Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal pooh-poohed claims, early yesterday morning, that a boy had fallen down a well in the capital and dismissed it as likely a rumour, police detained the stricken boy’s father and uncle.
Jihad’s father, Nasiruddin, and Manzur, the boy’s maternal uncle, were taken to the police station around 4am by Shahjahanpur police. Nasiruddin was held for over eleven hours and claims he was accused by the police of kidnapping his own child.
He said in the course of the interrogation police threatened him saying that if he did not talk now, he would face further beatings by the Rapid Action Battalion.
Manzur was held for about eight hours and claims to have been slapped and hit by the police during questioning.
They were being interrogated over the veracity of their claims that Jihad was trapped inside the well.
The police’s zeal to uncover the truth did not stop there. They detained three children who had told the media they had heard the child’s voice down the well, and took one of the first responders to the accident site – a neighbour to help – in for questioning.
Four-year-old Siam was questioned at the police station for an hour, Fatema, 15, Pushpita, 8, and Jahid Mia, in his late 20s, Pushpita’s father and one of the first adults on the scene were questioned for four hours.
Jahid Mia, one of the locals who rushed to the pipeline after hearing about the accident who later heard Jihad’s voice and communicated with him, later told the Dhaka Tribune that if the child had not been found, he and the others could have faced entrapment and police harassment for some time.
Jahid said around 3pm on Friday, he was watching TV at home.
Suddenly, his 8-year-old daughter Pushpita, shouted aloud that a child had fallen down the well. “I rushed in and shouted down to the child below, keeping my mouth close to the pipe in the well shaft.”
“The boy responded. I sent down a rope with a torch and told him to hold on to the rope. The boy again responded. I tried to pull him out, but could not. Fire fighters soon arrived and started their rescue operation but police officials did not believe it,” said Jahid.
This correspondent spoke with Pushpita and Fatema who were playing badminton nearby and heard Jihad’s cries first. They both told the Dhaka Tribune that they saw three boys playing near the well on Friday afternoon.
“As I went to pick up my shuttlecock which landed near the well, I heard screaming from inside. I ran over and called my father and some others. They also heard the screaming,” Pushpita said.
Jihad’s father Nasiruddin, a security Guard of Mothijheel Ideal School and College, told the Dhaka Tribune that he had dressed his son in a yellow outfit on Friday afternoon before the boy went out to play.
“A few moments later, two of Jihad’s friends, Siam and Jasin, came to my house and told me he had fallen into the abandoned deep tube well. I ran over and neighbours said they had heard his screams,” Nasiruddin said.
The grieving father questioned the authorities’ morning statement saying: “If my boy is not there, then where is he?”
“Police, instead of helping us, kept me locked up at the police station from last night until 3pm today, when my beloved son was finally found. This is the law of the country? What kind of law is this? I want justice,” the grieving father said.
Asked about detaining Jihad’s family and several witnesses, Shahjahanpur police station inspector Abdul Mabud, said they were brought to the police station to clarify what had happened. “Just routine duty,” the policeman said.
A mother’s grief and bewilderment
“So many people came and said all sorts of things. They delayed the rescue operation. Instead of making baseless comments, if they had done their jobs, he might be alive now,” Khadiza Akther, mother of four-year-old boy, said.
The stricken mother waited nearly 22 harrowing hours amid a barrage of negative comments, police harassment, and doubt that her son was in fact trapped, in front of their house at A/41 at the Shahjahanpur Railway Colony.
The diabetic patient slipped in and out of consciousness and endured the police detention of her husband and brother as she awaited the result of the ultimately fruitless rescue operation.
Khadiza last spoke with her son on Friday evening, keeping her mouth close to pipeline in the well.
The panic stricken mother wept nearly the entire time she was conscious until Jihad’s dead body was pulled out of his dark grave.
Finally, the recovery of the boy’s remains left her in grieving silence, and presumably silenced those who had claimed Jihad was not even in trouble.
