The complete autopsy and forensic report of Zubair Ahmed, crucial to the murder case of the Uttara O-level student, has reached investigators of the Detective Branch (DB) of Police, DB sources said.
DB Sub-Inspector (SI) Nasiruddin, also the investigation officer of the case, collected the report from Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH) around 3:30pm yesterday. Investigating officials are now analysing it.
Asked about its findings, SM Nazmul Alam, DB senior assistant commissioner (AC), told the Dhaka Tribune that investigators had yet to go through the report in detail but the finding of the reports clearly states evidence of intercourse. “This means our primary investigation was accurate and Zubair was sexually assaulted by the Algerian citizen,” he said.
Asked about the cause of death, he said investigators did not yet have a clear understanding of what happened.
“We need to analyse the forensic report and the statements of the eyewitness and accused to develop a clearer picture of the incident,” he said.
With the medical report in hand, we can now interrogate those who were at the crime scene and try to obtain more information from the accused, the senior AC added.
Seventeen-year-old Zubair Ahmed was known to be a good swimmer but allegedly drowned in a shallow pond inside a park in Sector 4 of the capital’s Uttara neighbourhood on October 4. Police recovered his body from the pond after Abuubaida Kadir, an Algerian national, showed them where it was.
Kadir was later arrested in a murder case filed by Zubair’s family.
Kadir’s involvement in the murder was first suggested when the sole eyewitness to the incident, a 17-year-old boy, gave his confessional statement to investigators.
Kadir reportedly arrived in Bangladesh on a student visa but he never went back to Algeria.
Instead, he destroyed his passport and other documents and lived in Bangladesh illegally, posing as a local and giving a local address when signing up for a mobile phone service.
A DB high official, requesting anonymity, told the Dhaka Tribune yesterday that investigators had contacted the Algerian Embassy in Pakistan. Investigators are trying verify a statement Kadir made to police claiming that he had applied to the embassy for a new passport after he lost his old dpassport after entering Bangladesh.
“We have a got a preliminary response,” the official said, adding that the statement given by Kadir was false.
Both Kadir and the sole eyewitness, following their respective remand sessions, are in custody. A DB source said it will be necessary to interrogate Kadir and the teenage eyewitness about the incident again to clarify some aspects of the medical reports.
