The Rangpur police claimed that the death of Begum Rokeya University student Abu Sayeed was caused by the gunfire from the protesters, and he was not a victim of police firing.
The statement of the case the Rangpur police filed following the death of Abu Sayeed revealed their claim.
The video footage, however, showed the police shooting at Abu Sayeed, who posed no physical threat to the law enforcers, during the quota reform demonstration near the university on July 16 that angered people聽 across the country.
Tajhat police sub-inspector Bibhuti Bhusan Ray, who is also the in-charge of the police camp on the Begum Rokeya University campus, filed a case with the police station over Sayeed鈥檚 death and mayhem on the campus on July 16.
According to the case鈥檚 First Information Report, the demonstrators fired shots and threw chunks of bricks from different directions, and at one stage, a student was seen falling to the ground, and his classmates took Sayeed, 23, to Rangpur Medical College Hospital, where doctor declared him dead.
The case accused 2,000鈥�3,000 unidentified people, including Bangladesh Nationalist Party and Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami and its student wing Islami Chhatra Shibir activists, over the killing and violence.
When asked, plaintiff Bibhuti Bhusan said that he had just filed the case, and was reluctant to say anything more.
Contacted, the deputy commissioner [crime] of Rangpur Metropolitan Police, Abu Maruf Hossain, said that the police primarily suspected that Sayeed was killed by the attack from the unidentified miscreants during the clash as a mark of injury was found in the backside of his head.
The police used non-lethal weapons to deescalate the protests. Death could not have occurred from shotgun bullet injury, he claimed.
A four-member committee was formed led by additional commissioner Saifuzzaman Faruki of the Rangpur Metropolitan Police to investigate the incident, which had been asked to submit report within two weeks, said Maruf, adding that the incident鈥檚 details would be clear once the investigation report was submitted.
Referring to the video footage, however, a police official, who preferred to remain unnamed, said that a policeman named Yunus Ali fired the weapon, and after the incident he was closed at Rangpur Police Lines.
When asked about the closure of Yunus Ali, police deputy commissioner Abu Maruf Hossain differed, saying that the policeman closed at the police lines was not Yunus Ali. He did not disclose the closed police member鈥檚 identity, citing 鈥榮ecurity reasons鈥�.
On July 16, Abu Sayeed, a 12th batch student of the English department in Begum Rokeya University, Rangpur, was killed when the police and the ruling Awami League-backed student organisation Bangladesh Chhatra League clashed with quota protesters on the campus in an hour-long confrontation.
Head of the forensic medicine department at Rangpur Medical College Hospital Razibul Islam, who conducted the post-mortem examination of Abu Sayeed鈥檚 body, said that his body bore marks of rubber bullet injuries and there was also an injury mark in the left parietal region of his head.
Razibul Islam said that Sayeed died of internal haemorrhage.
A photo of Sayeed taken before he was shot went viral on social media platforms where he was seen braving the police action with his hands up and holding a stick in his right hand.
Sayeed, from Babonpur in Pirganj, was the youngest of nine siblings and was continuing his studies amid severe hardship.
He was a brilliant student and scored Golden GPA-5 from Khalashpir High School and Rangpur Government College in SSC and HSC examinations respectively, said his family.
Sayeed attended Honours鈥� final examination this year but the result is yet to be published.
