Staff Reporters :
The High Court (HC) on Tuesday ordered the Home Secretary to withdraw Ashraful Islam, Police Superintendent (SP) of Gaibandha district, in connection with torching of Santals’ houses during the eviction drive in thedistrict’s Gobindaganj Upazila on November last.
Besides this, the HC also directed to withdraw the members of the law enforcers who were on duty in Chamgari area at the time of incident. The HC bench of Justice Obaidul Hassan and Justice Krishna Devnath passed the order after hearing on the probe report prepared by the Chief Judicial Magistrate of Gaibandha over the incident of fire.
The Court fixed March 9 to pass further order in this connection.
Advocate A M Amin Uddin took part in the hearing on behalf of the writ petitioners while Deputy Attorney General Motahar Hossain Sazu stood for the State.
A Judicial Magistrate in his investigation found involvement of three police personnel and some local miscreants in setting fire to Santal houses during an eviction drive in Gaibandha on November 6 last year. But those police personnel and local miscreants were not identified. Gaibandha Chief Judicial Magistrate Mohammad Shahidullah, who conducted the inquiry, submitted the 65-page probe report along with 1,001-page relevant papers to the Supreme Court Registrar General’s office on January 30 and it was placed in the HC in the next day.
Earlier on December 14, the High Court directed the Chief Judicial Magistrate of Gaibandha to investigate if police were involved in setting fire to the houses of Santal community during a clash that took place in the cane farm of Rangpur Sugar Mills in Gobindaganj upazila of Gaibandha district over harvesting sugarcane.
The HC bench asked the Chief Judicial Magistrate to submit the report within 15 days.
On that day, Ain o Salish Kendra (ASK) filed a supplementary petition attaching some national and international media reports and images, where police were seen to torch a house, seeking the court order to carry out an investigation to identify the arson attackers.
The court also directed the police to conduct the investigation into the two cases, filed on November 17 and 26 against 600 and 33 identified and unidentified people respectively over the same issue, same status. On November 26, Santals of Gaibandha filed a case against 33, including a local Awami League MP Principal Abul Kalam Azad and the UNO of Gobindaganj Abdul Hannan on charge of provoking an attack on the community on November 6.
On November 17, Swapan Murmu, a member of the community, filed another case against 600 people on charge of attacking the community. The clash took place on November 6 in the cane farm of Rangpur Sugar Mills located in Gobindaganj upazila of Gaibandha over harvesting sugarcane. The clash left three Santals dead and 25 people, including nine cops, injured.
Following these incidents, Ain o Salish Kendra (ASK) and some other organizations filed a writ petition on November 16 last year seeking security of Santals.
