



"Innocent people of the country are not safe in the hands of police," said Abdul Kadar, a Dhaka University student who had been picked up by police and tortured in custody for 13 hours.

A student of biochemistry and molecular biology, Kadar, was finally freed on bail yesterday after 18 days of detention. He described the brutal police atrocities on him to The Daily Star in Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University Hospital.

"I had lost all my hopes of survival," Kadar said recalling the way police tortured him.

"Since I was arrested without any offence and tortured, it comes to my mind often that no innocent person in the country is safe from police brutality," he said again.

Police tortured him in many ways -- with sticks, sharp weapons, and bare hands -- to make him confess that he had been involved in a robbery. And all through the torture session police were hurling expletives at him.

At one point, Officer-in-charge of Khilgaon Police Station Helal Uddin told his colleagues, "We beat him so much but still he does not confess," then he picked up a cleaver and chopped Kadar's leg with it.

Sitting in a chair in the hospital with his chopped left leg bandaged, he showed marks of injury on both his wrists, and said he was released as the High Court and the media stood beside him strongly.

"But, there are countless other innocent people in the country who are becoming victims of such police brutalities," said Kadar who was fasting on the second day of Ramadan.

"When the OC could not find any more space in my body that was not hit, he started to hit my hands and wrists with a stick," he said adding, "At one point I thought I was going to die."

Police showed no mercy to him even when he was crying for medical treatment in Khilgaon Police Station after his left leg was chopped.

"I was taken to a local clinic with blood rolling down my leg for two and half hours," said the DU student, adding that despite doctors' recommendation for sending him to Dhaka Medical College Hospital immediately, police did not pay heed.

Instead, they took him back to the police station and kept him detained again.

Since his arrest around 1:30am on July 16 from Segunbagicha area of the capital, police kept beating him intermittently till he was taken to a Dhaka Court around 4:00pm. He was put in a cell at the court. He was not brought before a judge. About an hour later police brought him out of the cell and took him to Dhaka Central Jail. By then blood was seeping out through the flimsy bandage that had been put on his injured leg at the clinic.

In the jail, he cried and pleaded with the authorities to arrange treatment for him, always insisting that he was innocent and a student of Dhaka University. Finally the jail authorities sent him to Dhaka Medical College Hospital around 8:30pm.

It took the doctors two and a half hours to stitch his injuries and put a bandage on his leg.

"I was not even served water for 11 hours in the police station," he said with tears in his eyes.

He now feels constant pain all over his body, he complained.