Please - Odhikar

Masum killed at Crossfire by Detective Police
There was a newspaper report titled 'Meritorious Student Masum Killed in so-called Crossfire of
the Detective Branch of Police'. Odhikar did a fact-finding of the incident and found following
facts.
It was revealed that on 8 July 2005 at 8 pm, Masum's family went to attend a family festival at
Mehedi Community Centre in Mohammadpur. At around 10 pm, Masum received a call in his
cell-phone and went out of the community centre. After a while, his father Khandaker Abul
Khair called in his cell-phone but found it dead. Since then they could not find any trace of
Masum. On returning home, Masum's family started searching for him through relatives. At
around 12 the same evening, they contacted Mohammadpur, Adabor and Mirpur Police Stations.
Finding no trace of Masum, his father became frustrated. The next morning (9 July) they
received news, from TV channel ATN Bangla, of the death of one Golakata ("Cut thrroat")
Masum in a crossfire of Detective Branch of Police. From that news, they could identify that it
was their Masum who became the victim of this crossfire.
Masum's father informed Odhikar that Masum was the fourth out of five children. After passing
out of high school with good results, he got admitted in the graduate course in Management
Science at Jagannath University College. He was never involved in politics or in any criminal
activities. He used to spend most of his time in academic and cultural activities. He also had
interest in sports. Masum was a good student, he had a special position in his family. The family
was financially well of and according to late Masum's father, "There is no reason for Masum to
turn into a criminal since he had neither poverty nor illiteracy." He alleged that the Detective
Police wrongly killed his innocent son and then tried to portray him as a criminal. No complaint
of the case was found filed against him in police stations. He commented that members of the
'Cheetah' unit of Detective Police, including Assistant Commissioner Rafiqul Islam and
Inspecter Nurul Alam, were involved in the operation and should be interrogated about Masum's
death.
People living in the Sher Shah Suri Road of Mohammadpur informed Odhikar that many of
them did not know Masum well. They came to know of him after the news of his killing by
police in a crossfire was published in the newspapers. They claimed that there was nobody
called 'golakata' or 'gharkata' Masum in the locality. Land lord of Masum's house Wadud Sarker
stated: "Masum's family has been a tenant of my house for the last ten years. So far as I know,
Masum was a good student, I have never found him gossiping or fighting with anybody in the
locality. I found him busy in singing and playing guitar very often."
Sources in the Dhaka Medical College Hospital informed Odhikar that Masum was shown as an
unnamed death in the hospital record. He was brought dead from the Rayerbazar Intellectual
Memorial to the emergency room of the hospital in the morning of 9 July 2005. Police SI Iqbal
Hosain brought the dead body. His body was sent for post-mortem at 3.30 pm the same
afternoon. The reason of death, as has been found in hospital records, was head injury. While
identifying Masum's dead body, his father found signs of bullet wounds in his head (1), hand (1)
and belly (3). No sign of injury was found in any other part of the body. He alleged that
detective police killed his son intentionally and in a planned way.
Report 2005
125