Bangladeshi police detectives forced three student protest leaders accused of causing deadly disturbances out of the hospital on Friday, transporting them to an unknown destination, according to workers.
Nahid Islam, Asif Mahmud, and Abu Baker Majumder are all members of Students Against Discrimination, the group that organised this month’s street protests against civil service hiring standards.
According to an AFP count of victims reported by police and hospitals, at least 195 people were murdered in the ensuing police crackdown and skirmishes, resulting in some of the worst unrest under Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s watch.
All three were hospitalised in Dhaka, and at least two claimed their injuries were the result of abuse while in police custody.
“They took them from us,” Gonoshasthaya hospital supervisor Anwara Begum Lucky told AFP “the men were from the Detective Branch.”
She also stated that she did not want to discharge the student leaders, but police had pressured the hospital chief to do so.
Fatema Tasnim, Islam’s elder sister, told AFP from the hospital that six plainclothes cops had apprehended all three males.
The trio’s student group halted new protests earlier this week, stating that they wanted government job quota change but not “at the expense of so much blood.”.
The delay was set to expire earlier on Friday, but the group had provided no indication of its next steps. Islam, 26, the chief coordinator of Students Against Discrimination, stated AFP reported from his hospital bed on Monday that he feared for his life.
He claimed that two days prior, a group of people posing as police investigators blindfolded, handcuffed, and transported him to an undisclosed place.
Islam went on to say that the next morning, he regained consciousness on a Dhaka roadside.
Mahmud previously told AFP that he had been held by police and abused during last week’s violence.
Three senior police officers in Dhaka all disputed that the trio was taken from the hospital and arrested on Friday.
Police told AFP on Thursday that they had arrested no fewer than 4,000 individuals since the protests began last week, with 2,500 in Dhaka.
On Friday, authorities announced they had detained David Hasanat, the founder and CEO of one of Bangladesh’s largest textile factories.
His Viyellatex Group employs around 15,000 people, according to its website, and the Daily Star newspaper put its yearly revenue at $400 million last year.
Hasanat and several others were accused of sponsoring the “anarchy, arson, and vandalism” of last week, according to Dhaka Metropolitan Police Inspector Abu Sayed Miah.
