Protests over the gruesome rape and murder of Comilla college girl Tonu grew wider as investigators quizzed family members of the victim seven days after the incident.
Law enforcers said that they were trying to identify the killers without any delay, but as of Sunday evening, investigators have no new information that could shed light into the incident.
Thousands of protesters in Dhaka, Comilla and elsewhere in the country, however, are blaming the law enforcing agencies for poor investigation and demanded immediate arrest of the killers and their associates.
Protesters said the investigators might be helpless as the crime was committed inside Comilla cantonment where the victim used to live with her parents.
Sohagi Jahan Tonu, a second-year student of Comilla Victoria College and activist of the college theatre, was found dead at Alipur in Comilla cantonment area on the night of March 20.
Post-mortem examination said she was killed after rape.
The following day, the victim’s father Yar Hossain, also Comilla Cantonment board clerk, filed a murder case with Kotwali police station.
The case was meanwhile transferred to the district detective branch of police Friday night for better investigation, New Age Comilla correspondent reported.
On Sunday, students from different education institutions including of Comilla Victoria Government College and Comilla University blocked the Dhaka-Chittagong highway at Kotbari area for three hours, demanding immediate arrest of the killers.
The students withdrew their blockade after local lawmaker AKM Bahauddin Bahar, Comilla deputy commissioner Hasanuzzman Kallol and superintendent of police Shah Adib Hossain promised ‘significant results’ by the next seven days.
The long-march of Ganajagaran Mancha meanwhile reached Comilla Sunday afternoon.
Prior to the road-march, the Mancha convener Imran H Sarkar alleged some quarters were trying to obstruct protests in Comilla.
As public outburst over the killing of Comilla’s college student Sohagi Jahan Tonu rocked several places in the country, students in Faridpur, and Comilla and an organisation in Laxmipur on Sunday formed human chains demanding justice for Tonu.
Students of different educational institutions including Dhaka University, East West University and Brac University also put up blockades on the road through the campuses.
New Age correspondents in Chittagong, Faridpur, Jahangirnagar University, Chapainawabganj and Khagrachari reported that different organisations held programmes protesting at Tonu’s murder.
Bangladesh Nationalist Party’s standing committee member Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain demanded a judicial probe into the killing.
Convening Committee for eight Organisations, a platform of eight Chittagong Hill Tracts-based organisations, alleged the ISPR’s statement relating to the ‘unfenced location’ was an effort to divert the suspicion.
They also alleged that RAB had harassed the victim’s family in the name of interrogation.
The Inter Services Public Relations in a statement, however, said they were providing all out assistance to the law enforcement agencies and administration to complete the investigation.
Five days after the incident, the ISPR in a statement on Friday night also said ‘activities’ have been started ‘meanwhile’ to reveal the reason behind the killing.
The statement also read the victim’s father Yar Ali found Tonu in an ‘unconscious stage’ at a location adjacent to the boundary of the Comilla cantonment on March 20.
The statement clarified that there was no boundary wall in the location where she was discovered by her father, who later informed the military police and rushed the victim to the Combined Military Hospital.
The ISPR said the duty doctor declared her dead and ‘later the post mortem was performed by the police.’
The Rapid Action Battalion officials, meanwhile, interrogated Yar Ali and the rest of his family members Friday midnight.
The home minister Asaduzzaman Khan in a programme in the capital also promised that justice would be served as the investigation is being carried out ‘sincerely’.
Source: New Age
