Nine members of a Bihari [stranded Pakistani] family have been burnt alive following a clash between the Bangali and Bihari community people in Kalshi of the capital’s Mirpur area on Saturday morning.
Another person, who received severe bullet injuries, died at Dhaka Medical College Hospital.
The nine victims of the Bihari family are – Baby, her sons Lalu and Bhulu, her daughters Farzana, Shahana, Afshana, Rukshana, Shika, wife of a son and Shahana’s son Maruf.
Imtiaz Ahmed, Deputy Commissioner of Dhaka Metropolitan Police, Mirpur Division, has told about the identities of the deceased.
Additional Deputy Commissioner of Dhaka Metropolitan Police Jasimuddin said: “The clash ensued between the Bangali youths and Bihari Community people at 5am over exploding crackers marking the Shab-e-Barat. The Banglai youths set fire at a house, leaving all nine family members dead.”
Deputy Commissioner of Dhaka Sheikh Yusuf Harun has visited the spot and announced that Tk20,000 will be provided to each of the victims as burial cost.
The bodies were taken to Dhaka Medical College Hospital morgue for autopsy, DC said.
Wishing anonymity, an official of Dhaka Medical College Hospital police outpost said: “Azad received severe bullet injuries and succumbed to his injuries at DMCH.”
Munna Hossain, joint secretary of Stranded Pakistanis General Repatriation Committe (SPGRC), an organisation of local Bihari community, said: “The Bangali and Bihari youths were exploding crackers seperately around 5am. Hearing the sound of blast, police rushed in and asked both the groups to stop exploding crackers. At one stage of talk, the police engaged in a chase and counter chase with the Bihari youths. Suddenly, the Bangali youths attacked the houses of Biharis in the presence of the police, set fire at five houses and injured many Bihari youths.”
“The local youths from Lalmatia slum locked the doors of Baby’s house from outside and set fire, leaving Baby and her family members dead,” he added.
Following the incident, Bihari Community people took to the street. The police have fired some blank shots to disperse the agitating people.
They have claimed that local Bangali youths vandalised some houses and looted valuables of the Biharis.
Source: Dhaka Tribune
Under a certain political leadership we seem to be increasingly emerging into and portraying ourselves as world’s nastiest and the most insensitive nation. As a nation, we show no concern to our own people who gets killed by the trigger happy Indian BSF at the border on a daily basis. The other day, Myanmar security forces killed one of our BGB members and more recently 6 more civilians traveling on a trawler. What did we do except giving a meaningless state funeral to the dead BGB, precious nothing. Now 10 Biharis have killed – who cares about Biharis when we don’t care about our own.
The ideas of human compassion, social justice, rule of law etc. are a complete anathema in present day Bangladesh. We have already earned our name as world’s most corrupt country and to this list we can now easily add, world’s most heartless.
No use appealing to this government to change things. Its leader has demonstrated that only people that are safe and gets her respect are those that are criminals (remember,her statements re Padma Bridge famed abul Hossain ” a patriot”, Shamim Osman “a friend of our family” etc. etc.
These guys are totally incapable of showing respect and sensitivity to people because they themselves possess none!