A teenager initially released by police after a private car ran over and killed a construction worker on a Baridhara footpath has been taken back into custody after CCTV footage raised questions over who was actually driving the vehicle.
The footage shows the teenager emerging from the driver’s side immediately after the crash, while the case filed over the death names another man, 44-year-old Akash Marak, as the driver.
The discrepancy has put the handling of the case under scrutiny, particularly why the teenager, who was detained by people at the scene and handed over to police, was released that night before investigators examined the footage.
Mehedi Hasan, 24, a construction worker from Sonaray village in Nilphamari’s Domar upazila, was resting on the footpath of Road No 1 in the Baridhara Diplomatic Zone at around 5pm on Tuesday when the car mounted the pavement and ran him over.
Bystanders pulled his bloodied body from beneath the vehicle. He was taken to Kurmitola General Hospital, where doctors declared him dead.
CCTV footage circulating on social media shows the car coming to a halt after striking a streetlamp post. Two people then emerge from the vehicle.
A teenager wearing a black T-shirt is seen getting out from the right-hand, driver’s side, while a middle-aged man exits from the other side.
The teenager is later seen moving away from the scene before local people detained him and handed him over to police.
The teenager is an O-Level student at an English-medium school in Gulshan, according to Gulshan Police Station sources.
His father is a Biman Bangladesh Airlines captain, while the vehicle is registered in his mother’s name.
Police initially said the teenager had been taken into custody to protect him from an angry crowd.
Ismail Hossain, inspector (investigation) of Gulshan Police Station, said he was questioned and later released into his uncle’s custody because he had not been named in the case.
Mehedi’s brother, Moktadir Islam, filed the case under the Road Transport Act, naming Akash Marak as the person driving the vehicle.
According to the complaint, Akash was driving recklessly when the car struck Mehedi, causing severe injuries to his head, chest and back.
Akash has remained absconding since the incident, while police seized the car.
However, police subsequently reviewed the CCTV footage after a report on the incident was published by Prothom Alo and found evidence warranting further investigation into the teenager’s role.
Mohammad Ruhul Kabir, deputy commissioner of Gulshan Division Police, said the report came to his attention and investigators then analysed the footage.
Police subsequently brought the teenager from his Gulshan residence to the police station and took him into custody.
The footage does not, by itself, establish who was driving at the moment the car struck Mehedi.
But the teenager’s emergence from the driver’s side, his detention at the scene and the naming of another person as the driver have become central to the investigation.
Attempts to reach Mehedi’s brother to ask why Akash was identified as the driver and the teenager was not named in the complaint were unsuccessful as his phone was switched off.
The case now centres on resolving that discrepancy: who was behind the wheel when the car mounted the footpath and killed Mehedi, and why was a teenager found on the driver’s side initially allowed to leave police custody?
