A 17-year-old who came to Dhaka from Tangail to prepare for university admission tests was killed and his body taken to Nilphamari in a carton and buried, Dhaka Metropolitan Police have said.
Mohidul Islam, joint commissioner of the DMP’s crime prevention north division, gave the details at a briefing at the DMP media centre on Wednesday. He said Rakibul Islam had enrolled at a coaching centre in Farmgate after his HSC examinations and was staying at a mess in Sheorapara. On the afternoon of 16 September he was called by WhatsApp to the Sheorapara metro station and taken to a flat in Shukrabad. He was not seen again.
Police said the two WhatsApp numbers used to demand ransom were traced to Md Abdullah Al Mamun, also known as Mamun Sarkar, 24, who worked for a marketing company and had got to know Rakibul online some months earlier. He was detained in the Shukrabad bus stand area on the evening of 5 October and, police said, admitted the killing under questioning.
According to police, Mamun beat Rakibul at his flat and pressed him for money; in a struggle the boy’s neck was broken and he died. Mamun then contacted the family himself, demanded Tk 15 lakh and threatened to kill the boy. Hoping to get him back alive, the family sent Tk 4 lakh in all to four bKash and three Nagad numbers.
Police said Mamun put the body in a carton, sealed it with tape and, with the help of his building’s guard, took it by autorickshaw to the Gabtoli bus stand and on to his home area in Dimla, Nilphamari. On the night of 17 September he buried it, carton and all, in a betel nut garden in front of his house.
When the family still could not find Rakibul, his elder brother, Zahirul Islam, came to Dhaka and filed a general diary with Kafrul police station, which led police to the suspect. On 6 October the body was recovered from the garden with the help of Dimla police, identified by the brother and sent for a post-mortem examination at Nilphamari Sadar Hospital.
Police said Tk 50,000 of the ransom had been recovered. The brother has filed a case over the abduction and ransom demand. Mamun was sent to the Dhaka Chief Metropolitan Magistrate’s Court on Wednesday as he wished to make a confessional statement, and police are looking into whether anyone else was involved.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report