Court Correspondent :
The Speedy Trial Tribunal-1 of Dhaka yesterday begun the trial in Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) student Abrar Fahad murder case against 25 accused, with recording the depositions of the complainant.
Judge Abu Zafar Md Kamruzzaman of the tribunal recorded the depositions of complainant Md Barkat Ullah, father of the victim Abrar, for more than an hour.
Later, defence for accused Anik Sarkar started cross-examining the complainant. As the defence lawyer could not complete cross-examination, the judge fixed today (Tuesday) for next hearing in the case.
The complainant told the court that he came to know from people that some students of BUET’s Sher-e-Bangla Hall, in a planned way, beat his son Abrar Fahad to death.
Later he came to Dhaka and discussed with some students and teachers and came to know from CCTV footage that 19 students, including Anik Sarkar, beat up his son mercilessly with cricket stumps, sticks and skipping rope, sometime between 8:05pm on October 6 and 2:30am on October 7 last year with an intention to kill him.
Due to merciless torture, Abrar died and the students dumped his son’s body on the stairs of the first floor. Later, some students took his body to Dhaka Medical College and Hospital where the on duty physicians declared him dead, the complainant added.
“After collecting CCTV footage, information from other students and teachers and consulting with my relatives, I filed the case against the accused with Chawkbazar Police Station,” said the father of the victim. The witness also said the accused killed his son due to previous enmity and later, eight of them narrated to magistrates how they tortured his son to death.
The complainant sought exemplary punishment for all the accused.
Twenty-two of the accused, who are behind the bar, were produced before the tribunal during yesterday’s hearing while three others have been absconding since the case was filed.
On September 15, the same tribunal framed charges against the 25 accused of the case.
Abrar, a second-year student of the Electrical and Electronic Engineering Department of BUET, died after he was brutally beaten allegedly by some Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL) men at Sher-e-Bangla Hall of the university in the early hours of October 7, last year. Later, his father Barkatullah, filed a case with Chawkbazar Police Station against 19 BCL leaders of BUET unit.
On November 13, last year, detectives submitted a 105-page charge-sheet against 25 BUET students in connection with the murder case. Of them, 22 accused were arrested and they were remanded several times. During the investigation, eight of the accused gave confessional statements to different courts on different dates. The rest three accused are on the from the beginning.
