UNIDENTIFIED assailants hacked to death a journalist of a Bengali daily published from Rangpur, tying him to a tree in an isolated place in Rangpur city on Wednesday night. Police recovered the body of 30-year-old Mashiur Rahman Utsho, Staff Reporter of the Daily Juger Alo, from Dharmadas area on Dhaka-Rangpur highway around 8:00am on December 24, as per media reports.
It was a planned murder. The killers hit him with sharp weapons in the head and hands, said police. The motive behind the killing was yet to be ascertained. Police said they were trying to recover the cell phone, motorbike and digital camera the killers took away from the slain journalist. The victim’s family members said he had no enmity with anyone.
Utsho’s colleagues, however, said he might have been murdered for writing on drug peddling in Rangpur Zone. Following his reports, law enforcers busted some dens of drug peddlers and traders. Even on Thursday, the newspaper ran Utsho’s report on how the Narcotics Control Department in Rangpur was struggling to check drug peddling with only 10 staff.
Utsho’s family members identified his body at Rangpur Medical College Hospital on Thursday morning. His wife Tahmina Begum said she waited all night for her husband’s phone call but it never came. Utsho’s father Shamsul Huda Mondol said he wants exemplary punishment of the killers.
The international agency, Committee to Protect Journalists; reports that Bangladesh now ranks as the 7th deadliest country for journalists. Local human rights body Ain-o-Shalish Kendro reports that in 2015 (upto Sept), 191 journalists have become the victims of harassments, torture and Utsho is the second journalist killed this year.
Enraged by the killing, journalists in Rangpur formed a human chain in front of the Office of the Superintendent of Police and demanded immediate arrest and punishment of the killers. They vowed to continue the protest to press home their demand for justice and bring the killers under the process of the court.
But the journalists themselves are to be blamed for choosing to be party activists.
The death of anybody, not to speak of a journalist, should be a matter for grave concern. Investigation into serious crimes like murder comes under too much pressure from too many quarters to be reliable. So we do not talk of investigation that it is unreliable.
The government itself needs help to be in charge. Besides, the government is absent-minded about deaths and disappearances of others who do not matter to the government. We urge the police administration to be honest and efficient so that criminals fear them, not the political opponents.
