Author: Abdullah -Al Mahmud
Publication: The Daily Star
Date: November 21, 2003
URL: http://www.thedailystar.net/2003/11/21/d3112101044.htm
The scene was grim. The charred
bodies of 11 people of a Hindu family were still lying in the burnt-out
remains of their house yesterday.
Relatives of the victims, torched
alive allegedly by a gang of robbers in an outlying village on the Banshkhali
coast, 30 miles off Chittagong city early Wednesday, were still sobbing
out the litany of loss.
Police arrested Saheb Mia, 27, son
of Shamsu Mia, at Ilisha and Shahab Uddin, 26, son of Abdul Hamid, at Chapachhari
in a hunt.
The cremation of the bodies, kept
for other relatives to take the last glimpse, will be held at about 10:30am
today.
The overnight arson attack left
Bimalendra Shushil to live with none of his family: the grisly massacre
killed his father Tejendra Lal Shushil, nine others of his family and a
relative.
Bimal, a village physician, said
the robbers forced their way into his two-storey mud house but failed to
go upstairs as he locked the wooden staircase door, blocking the entry.
Angered, the robbers set the house
alight, said Bimal who escaped with severe ankle injuries and is being
treated at a city clinic.
"I could only see smoke curling
up. I thought it was from short-circuit," said 50-year-old Shachindra Shushil,
a relative.
"We got to know the house was burning
when the plumes of smoke surrounded the whole area. We tried to help the
victims after the robbers left, but we could not. We didn't find any way
into the house to rescue them. We were just helpless onlookers," said Shachin,
still in a daze.
Pulin Shushil, another relative,
said, "They had no enmity with others. I simply can't believe it."
Local Union Parishad Chairman Ahsan
Ullah said the family was on friendly terms with all in the neighbourhood.
Police blamed the carnage on a gang
of criminals, based in Dongra, one of areas in the forest-rimmed coastal
upazila of Banshkhali -- a safe den of robbers who operate in 12 groups.
Banshkhali Police Station recorded
15 robberies in 2002 and nine until November 19 this year.
State Minister for Environment and
Forest Jafrul Islam Chowdhury said the government had sincere efforts to
free Banshkhali of robbers.
"We have already taken measures
to arrest and punish the killers of the Shushil family," said the state
minister, who visited the scene after Wednesday's visit by Home Minister
Altaf Hossain Choudhury.
"A police camp has been set up at
the scene and an investigation is going on under the superintendent of
police," Jafrul said.
State Minister for Water Resources
Goutam Chakraborty, Chittagong City Mayor ABM Mohiuddin Chowdhury and leaders
of different organisations also visited the spot.
Wednesday's bloodbath recalls another
macabre incident in which Arati Bala Nath, her daughter and mother were
burnt alive at Nath Para in Chambol Union of the upazila on May 8 after
their house was set ablaze by a gang in a bid to grab land.
