Staff Reporter :
The High Court (HC) does not like “extrajudicial killings”, a HC bench said it while giving an observation on Rifat Sharif murder yesterday.
“Nayan Bond, the alleged killer of Barguna youth Rifat Sharif, was not made in a day. He was brought up and made a criminal,” the High Court bench of Justice F R M Nazmul Ahasan and Justice K M Kamrul Kader said.
The HC bench passed the observation after Deputy Attorney General (DAG) Abdullah Al Mahmud Bashar placed a police report in the court in connection with the murder of Rifat Sharif on June 26.
According to the Ain O Salish Kendra (ASK), at least 166 persons were killed by the law enforcers from January 2019 to May 2019. Among them 119 were ‘cross fired’ before arrest and 36 after arrest. Two persons were killed by physical torture after arrest and five were killed by shootout before arrest. One person committed suicide in custody, one died for sickness in custody and two persons’ bullet hit dead-body were recovered after arrest.
According to ASK documentation based on various national dailies and its’ own sources, a total of 466 people were killed in these types of incidents in 2018. As many as 292 people died during the law enforcement agencies’ drive against drug traffickers, which continued from 4 May to 31 December 2018. It is to be noted that in 2017, the number of deaths in gun-fight/cross-fire/bullets-exchange/encounter and deaths in custody was 162.
Whether crossfire killing was in self-defence has to be established in a court of law. But no such cases are recorded for proving that the killing by police was necessary to save his life and there was no other option. So the crossfire is not an easy defence. The court has to be satisfied.
But the general view among the police seems to be that they have immunity for prosecution if they claim that the killing was in self-defence. This view is far from correct in the eye of law.
DAG Bashar said, “No accused of the case could leave the country. In the meantime, the law enforcers arrested five accused and five other suspects in connection with the killing case. Besides, the main accused of the case Nayan Bond was killed in a ‘gunfight’ with police. Police are trying their best to capture the other accused. Hundreds of members of police and RAB are working in the field to arrest the accused.”
At this stage, the court said, “We don’t like extrajudicial killing. Nayan Bond was not made in a day. He was brought up and made a criminal.”
It will pass order on this issue later on if it feels necessary, the court added.
On June 27, the HC bench ordered the government to place a report in the HC on July 4 (Thursday) on the action taken against the killers of Rifat Sharif.
Nayan was a member of the Facebook chat group “007”. The group was managed by Nayan and his close accomplice Rifat Farazi, police said.
On June 26, Nayan and Rifat Farazi, along with some others, attacked 25-year-old Rifat Sharif, an internet service provider, with sharp weapons in front of Barguna Government College and his wife.
A video clip of the barbaric attack, probably captured on a mobile phone, went viral on social media triggering public outrage, with many condemning the bystanders for not coming forward to save Rifat. His wife Ayesha alone desperately tried to save her husband from the attackers but in vain.
Law enforcers claimed that Nayan was killed in a “gunfight” with them in Barguna on July 2.
