Future bleak for victim families

After the death of his wife, he devoted all his attention and energy to ensuring better life and education for his two little kids.

A rickshawpuller in Dhaka, Abdul Hakim never thought of getting married again.

He started spending more time pulling rickshaw to earn more.  Every month, he sent Tk 3,000 to Tk 5,000 to Rangpur where the kids have been staying with their maternal grandparents since their mother died four years back.

But all his efforts came to an end just because of a drunken rage of a ruling party MP's son.

Hakim and an auto-rickshaw driver Yakub Shikder were shot by Bakhtiar Alam Rony, son of Awami League lawmaker and Mahila AL General Secretary Pinu Khan, in the early hours of April 14.

Hakim breathed his last 16 hours later and Yakub on April 23.

Hakim had been pulling rickshaw owned by Shaheen Mia of the capital's Modhubagh Jhilpar for the last 20 years.

"He often cried in my garage for his wife and children. I advised him to marry again, 

but he never agreed just for the sake of his children," Shaheen said.

Hakim's mother Monwara Begum, who filed a murder case for the killing, said after her son's death she started working as a domestic help.

"I want punishment for my son's murderer though I don't know whether a poor woman like me will get justice when the killer is an influential person," she said.

Like Monowara Begum and her two grandchildren, Yakub's family members are passing dark days.

 "We don't know how we'll survive," said Yakub's step daughter Runa Akhtar. "My mother has been suffering from heart ailment and she needs medicines. But now she cannot buy those regularly."

After Yakub got separated from his first wife, he married Runa's mother Salma Begum.

"My mother took out a high-interest loan of Tk 70,000 for my father's treatment hoping that he would recover. We don't how she will repay it," said Runa.

Salma is now staying with Runa, whose husband works at an engineering workshop. "We cannot run our family of four smoothly with the income of my husband," she added.

Runa, however, said whatever it takes, they want justice.

Bakhtiar told investigators that he had gone to a local bar in the evening and a DJ party at Sonargaon Hotel later at night on April 13.

Returning drunk from Sonargaon around 1:30am, he was feeling suffocated inside his car caught in a traffic gridlock near Dilu Road.  That's why, lowering the car window, he fired four to five times from his licensed pistol, DB officials quoted him as saying.

Bakhtiar is involved in Jubo League politics. His three friends, who too are Dhaka city Jubo League members, were with him at the time, an investigator said.  

Narrating the shooting, his driver has already made a confessional statement before a magistrate. Bakhtiar is now on a four-day remand which will end tomorrow.

"We may produce Bakhtiar before the court tomorrow [today] but will not seek further remand," said investigation officer of the case, DB Sub-Inspector Dipak Kumar.

He said they might not ask Bakhtiar to make confessional statement before court either because the driver already made it.

Asked if there is pressure from any quarter for producing Bakhtiar before the court a day before the end of his remand, a DB official, wishing anonymity, said in every case, the family of the accused try to exert some influence.

Interrogators said Bakhtiar already admitted to random shooting, injuring several people, but he did not know whether anyone was killed.