A young life taken over alleged theft

Akash was the centre of Dipa's world since he was just an infant.

He lost his mother when he was nine months old, and his father got remarried and abandoned his two children.

Dipa, Akash's paternal aunt, then took it upon herself to raise the children as her own and avoided getting married to focus on them.

After Akash's sister was married off, he was all Dipa had.

And in the blink of an eye, he was gone.

Akash Mia, 14, was beaten to death allegedly by construction workers who suspected him of stealing construction materials in Aziz Mohalla area of the capital's Mohammadpur early yesterday.

The incident occurred when the seventh grader, also a resident of Tikkapara in Mohammadpur, and two of his friends were passing by an under-construction building around 2:00am.

Suddenly some construction workers started chasing them down, accusing them of stealing iron rods from the site.

While the two friends managed to escape, the workers got hold of Akash. They tied him to a chair and beat him with heavy objects until he fell unconscious.

Speaking to The Daily Star, Akash's brother-in-law Jewel Mollah said, "When he was gone for too long, we began searching for him. We looked for him all night but couldn't find him."

Around 5:30am, Dipa got a call from an unknown person, who told her that Akash was at a construction site.

"As she [Dipa] rushed there, she found Akash tied to a chair ... beaten to a pulp. She rescued him and took him home. But within hours, he passed away ... She is no more in a state to talk," Jewel said.

On information, police recovered Akash's body from his Tikkapara home around 10:00am and sent it to Shaheed Suhrawardy Medical College Hospital for autopsy.

Morgue sources said his body bore injury marks, confirming that he was severely beaten with heavy objects.

Dipa, a garment worker, filed a murder case with Mohammadpur Police Station against unnamed people yesterday evening.

Shell-shocked and devastated, she demanded a thorough investigation and punishment to all those involved in the murder of her nephew.

Mahfuzul Haque, officer-in-charge of Mohammadpur Police Station, said, "We are quite certain the construction workers [of the building]. We are conducting drives to arrest them."