The body of a former Dhaka University (DU) student was recovered on Sunday from the lake at the Boat Club in the Majhira B-Block area of Shajahanpur, Bogra, raising many questions.
Citing CCTV footage, police claim that the deceased, Hasin Raihan Soumik, 27, entered the lake on his own and died by suicide.
However, his father, uncle, and other family members allege that Soumik was taken nearly 10 kilometres away from the city and deliberately killed over a prior dispute.
According to police and relatives, Soumik was the son of Taufiqur Rahman Helal from Bocharpukur village in Sonatala upazila, Bogra.
Soumik completed his master’s in computer science from DU and was preparing to go to the University of Texas at Dallas in the United States with a scholarship for higher studies, they said.
On Thursday evening, he left their Bogra home for a walk and had been missing since. His mobile phone was also switched off.
The next day, his father filed a general diary with Bogra Sadar police station reporting his son missing.
Later, police recovered the body, which was identified by family members.
A wallet wrapped in polythene and a Bluetooth device were found in his pants pocket.
Shajahanpur police station Officer-in-Charge Shafiqul Islam Palash and Inspector (Investigation) Masud Karim said there were no injury marks on Soumik’s body during the inquest.
CCTV footage from the area showed that he entered the lake himself at night, after which he died, they said.
His body was sent to the Bogra Shaheed Ziaur Rahman Medical College Hospital morgue for autopsy, they added.
Tajul Islam, a member of Aria union in Shajahanpur, who was present when the body was recovered, said the water in the lake was not deep enough for someone to drown accidentally.
The body was floating face down, and blood was seen coming from his nose, Tajul claimed.
Soumik’s father, Taufiqur Rahman, and uncle Ahsan Habib, the organizing secretary of the BNP’s Sonatala unit, said Soumik was a brilliant student, had no signs of depression, and was actively preparing to study in the US.
They questioned why he would go so far from home, about 10 kilometres, to commit suicide.
They claimed that a pre-Eid dispute between Soumik and a ground-floor tenant over dripping water from the flat’s air conditioner may have led to his killing.
They alleged that the group involved in the murder had collected a bus ticket in Soumik’s name to Dhaka and that there are call records from Barisal and Dhaka’s Motijheel area on his phone.
They believe the perpetrators staged the bus ticket as part of an attempt to mislead the investigation.
The family plans to file a murder case soon.
Soumik’s father demanded capital punishment for his son’s killers.
Following the autopsy at Bogra Shaheed Ziaur Rahman Medical College, Soumik’s body was handed over to his family and taken to his ancestral home in Bocharpukur village, Sonatala, for burial.
