Nasir Fakir Both the home and the police bosses yesterday defended the insensitive act of detaining the traumatised father of Jihad at the Shahjahanpur Police Station for 12 hours to glean information of his son's "actual whereabouts". The state minister and the police chief claimed law enforcers picked up the father, Nasir Fakir, with a good intent to inquire about the lost kid. But they could no
t explain why the man was held in police station for so long. Their comments speak of their callousness to the mental trauma the father was in while desperately searching for his son along with the rescuers. A few hours after his confinement, his brother-in-law, Manju Molla, went to the police and requested them to release Nasir. But police allowed him to leave only after his son was pulled out dead from the abandoned well. "Police were trying to know the boy's whereabouts since there was no trace of him. The boy could be missing and he has to be found out. For this, police took him [Nasir] to the police station," State Minister for Home Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal told reporters at the secretariat. “It is very regrettable if anything like that [torture] happened. But we did not hear anything like that. We heard it from you,” he said when journalists asked about the alleged police torture on Nasir. Inspector General of Police Hassan Mahmud Khandker also claimed Nasir was not harassed by his force and that cops had picked him up only to inquire about Jihad's whereabouts “in a cordial atmosphere”. Advertisement “Some of the kids who were playing with him [Jihad] were also taken for interrogation…Just to know what the matter was, just to inquire into the incident with honest intent.” But he added they would look into the allegation of torture on Nasir. However, both the state minister and the police boss ignored the fact that confining a person as traumatised as Nasir was torture enough. Interestingly, Shahjahanpur police on Saturday claimed they kept Nasir in their custody for security reasons, although there was no known threat on the man's life. Nasir was picked up from the Railway Colony around 3:00am on Saturday, minutes after the state minister said there was no sign of the boy in the well. The home boss, Dhaka Metropolitan Police Commissioner Benazir Ahmed and other senior police officials were present at the time of his detention. Police first took him to different places, asking him all the while about his son's whereabouts. Finally, he was taken to the Shahjahanpur Police Station, family members and locals said. For several hours, his family was in the dark as to where he was. Later, they came to know that police took him away. “Nasir lost his son, he is not a criminal. Police cannot confine him for so long and quiz him. This is an additional shock for a human being,” a relative said, requesting anonymity. Jihad's mother Khadiza Begum said they told the police repeatedly that her son fell into the well, but they would not believe it. “I sent my brother to the police station but they refused to release my husband…. Police rather told my brother that we hid the boy somewhere and that they will not release my husband until my kid was found,” she told The Daily Star. A teacher of Motijheel Model School and College, where Nasir works as security guard, also went to the police station after learning about his arrest. “Police told us that they took him for interrogation,” he said. After Jihad's body was pulled out, locals expressed their anger over the police action and demanded an investigation to know the real motive of the police. “This is beyond imagination that the man who was already shocked will face such a cruel behaviour of police,” eminent rights activist Sultana Kamal told The Daily Star. “It is not only unethical but also inhuman and illegal. They acted beyond their jurisdiction which is not acceptable. The police personnel concerned should be brought to justice and they should offer an apology to the victim,” she added. National Human Rights Commission Chairman Prof Mizanur Rahman said, "When they [law enforcers] were supposed to console the father and try to find out his son, they harassed him instead. This is a proof of how insensitive the law enforcers have become," he told this paper. "This [practice] must change immediately," he said, adding that the state cannot behave with its citizens this way. Meanwhile, an organisation named Amader Sangha formed a human chain before the Jatiya Press Club, protesting negligence in rescuing the kid and demanding resignation of the state minister for home for his irresponsible comments about the boy.
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