Slain councillor and panel mayor of Narayanganj City Corporation Narul Islam, whose decomposing body was recovered from the Shitalakhya river yesterday – three days on from his abduction with 4 associates – was laid to eternal rest Thursday morning. Following namaz-e-janaza, he was buried at his family graveyard off the Dhaka-Chittagong highway near Sanarpar bus stand in Siddhirganj around 11 am. Earlier, the bodies of Nazrul and his friend Tajul Islam, two of the seven victims in the unspeakable incident that has put entire Narayanganj on a knife-edge, were brought to the burial spot in an open-top truck over the Dhk-Ctg highway. Parts of the highway had been closed at various points since the abductions on Sunday, as locals’ anger boiled over at the apparent indifference of the administration and law-enforcement agencies, as well as the rapid decay of law-and-order in Narayanganj recently. Narayanganj City Mayor Selina Hayat Ivy at one point expressed her disappointment last night, as no magistrate came to record the condition of the dead bodies, even three hours after they were recovered. On the other hand, despite Nazrul’s wife Selina Islam Beauty entering an abduction case on Monday accusing her husband’s fellow councillor Nur Hossain of the crime, police dithered over the matter of arresting him. Hossain, who ran for and became councillor of Ward #4 despite several cases including murder against his name, is now believed to have gone into hiding. But in the first two days following the abduction, he was even reached for comment by media outlets. Today as well, a long tailback stretching several kilometres ensued on the Dhk-Ctg highway, as a stretch of the road was effectively closed off. But rather than the rage and frustration of the past few days, today’s closure resulted from the people’s desire to pay their last respects to Nazrul, who held an elected post, and Tajul. Thousands of people gathered on the highway itself to take part in the two janazas. On Sunday, April 27, Nazrul and four of his associates (including their driver), were abducted by miscreants thought to be posing as law-enforcement officials from Fatullah. Within hours, senior lawyer at the district Judge’s Court Chandan Kumar Sarker and his driver were also abducted while on their way to Dhaka. It is thought that the two separate instances of abduction, and subsequent septuple-murder (7 murders) that has disgusted the entire nation, are connected. Their deaths were confirmed on Wednesday afternoon, with the recovery of six bodies that became visible once the tide had gone out on two branches of the Shitalakhya and Dhaleshwari rivers. The seventh body was recovered from the Shitalakhya on Thursday morning. The killers, clearly professionals, took painstaking precautions to make sure the bodies wouldn’t turn up. Not only did they weigh down each body with 24 bricks tied to the feet, they also enclosed the skulls in double-wrapped polythene, and cut out each man’s stomach to prevent the bodies from floating. – UNB
