There is widespread turmoil over the killing of Ishiyat Shahriar Apratim, 13, the son of a Cumilla University teacher. There is discussion that various matters may lie behind the killing. It is thought that a drug syndicate in the Kotbari-Salmanpur area and a teenage gang may be involved. There is discussion that the theft of an iPhone, and some group angered at Apratim’s mother, may be connected to it.
CCTV footage has meanwhile been released showing him being taken up the hill after being enticed there. Police, the Detective Branch, the CID, the PBI and the SRB have all taken the field to uncover the mystery of the killing.
Enquiries established that Dr Nahida Begum, associate professor in the Bengali department at Cumilla University, lived in a rented house in the Kotbari Gandhamati area with her husband and their only child, Apratim. She served as the university’s acting proctor for a month in February and March 2025.
Local people said that on March 1, 2025, students detained eight adolescents from the Salmanpur area who were taking drugs while sitting at the central Shaheed Minar inside the university. Proctor Nahida Begum then handed them over to the police. The names of Milon and Al Amin, drug dealers from Salmanpur, came up at that time.
It is thought that the area’s teenage gang and drug ring may have been angered at her over that incident. Beyond that, it is thought there may be more than one reason behind the killing, including the theft of the valuable iPhone in Apratim’s hand. Law-enforcement agencies have said several members of a teenage gang were involved in the killing.
Enquiries found that on Friday a member of a teenage gang named Tuhin first took him up the hill after enticing him with the offer of taking photographs. Another adolescent named Anas and several others were present there at the time, it is understood.
Sources said it is thought that a ring from the teenage gang had been lying in wait there beforehand. He was strangled and beaten and killed in a planned manner. His iPhone and wallet were taken. The killers then left his body on a slope of the hill and fled.
Apratim’s body was recovered at around noon on Saturday from a patch of jungle behind Magic Paradise Park, near Cumilla University. Police have detained an adolescent named Tuhin on suspicion of involvement in the incident.
Students have held a protest march in the Cumilla University campus area demanding justice for the killing. Monirul Haque Chowdhury, MP for the Cumilla-6 constituency, hurried to the scene to console the dead boy’s parents.
At around 3:30pm on Friday (September 18), Apratim had left the family’s home in the Kotbari area of ward 24, under Sadar South police station, taking his mother’s iPhone to photograph friends. He never returned home. After searching in various places without finding him, his father, K M Firoz Shahriar, filed a general diary at Sadar South police station that day.
Police had been active alongside relatives in the search for Apratim from the time he went missing, reviewing his last location and CCTV footage from the areas around Cumilla University.
Apratim’s mother, Dr Nahida Begum, said: “I do not know why my only son was killed. I want the killers brought to justice.”
Cumilla’s superintendent of police, Mohammad Anisuzzaman, said several suspects were being questioned over suspected involvement in the killing, and that the mystery of this much-discussed killing would be uncovered in the shortest possible time.
He said several police teams had taken the field from the moment Apratim went missing. Several important clues have been found in the case, he said, and whether the killing was only about the iPhone or had some other purpose would be uncovered quickly. However many people were involved in the killing, he said, they would be brought within the law.
Sadar South police station’s officer-in-charge, Rakibul Islam, said several people were being questioned on suspicion of involvement in the killing and several were in police custody, but that their names could not be given at this stage in the interests of the investigation. The body was recovered and sent to the morgue at Cumilla Medical College Hospital.
Abdul Kader Jilani, the first person to see Apratim’s body, said: “We had come here to cut bamboo. I had no watch on my wrist and no mobile phone with me. The time would have been about half past ten to half past eleven. My son was telling me someone was sleeping over there. Looking carefully, I saw there was a wound on his head. I was frightened. Then I informed the university.”
Cumilla University’s proctor, Professor Abdul Hakim, said: “From the moment the incident happened we contacted various units of the law-enforcement agencies, including the police, the Detective Branch and the Special Response Battalion. But unfortunate though it is, it is true that we did not find the boy alive. His mother’s iPhone, which was with him, has not been found either.”
Ishiyat Shahriar Apratim was a seventh-grade student at Border Guard Public School. He was the only child of Dr Nahida Begum, associate professor in the Bengali department at Cumilla University, and K M Firoz Shahriar.