NAZIM MURDER : Family refuses to file case

The family of murdered online activist Nazim Uddin Samad refused to file any case, compelling the police to file the murder case against four to five unknown men on Thursday night.
Police said the family was afraid of being persecuted.
Nazim, a law student of Jagannath University who was reportedly critical of Islam on Facebook, also did not seek police help when he was attacked in 2015 and received regular threats over phone from unknown people, his friends claimed.
Nazim was hacked and shot to death Wednesday night by machete-wielding assailants who shot him dead near the university while he was on his way home after attending evening classes.
Wari police division deputy commissioner Syed Nurul Islam told New Age that the family did not agree to file any case despite the police’s repeated requests.
‘It seems the family is afraid of being persecuted,’ he said.
Sutrapur police station officer-in-charge Tapan Kumar Saha said Nazim’s cousin Badrul Haque received the body, arriving from London Thursday night, but refused to file any case.
Police finally filed the murder case against four to five unknown assailants, the OC said.
Badrul told New Age that he was not interested in filing any case because ‘filing of a case would make no sense as my brother will not return’.
He said Nazim’s brothers were living abroad and he came to Bangladesh just to receive the body and bury it.
Nazim’s friend Kawser Ahmed said that Nazim had received anonymous threats over phone ‘telling him not to write on Facebook.’
‘He was also attacked in Sylhet in May 2015 a few days after the killing of blogger Ananta Bijoy Das, but managed to escape,’ Kawser said, adding that Nazim was among 84 bloggers who were on the hit list of Islamists.
‘But Nazim was reluctant about seeking any police help’, Kawsar said.
Sylhet Metropolitan Police deputy commissioner Faisal Mahmud confirmed that Nazim had not asked for police protection.
Police officials on Friday evening said no one was arrested yet in the murder of Nazim.
Wari police division DC, Nurul, said the police was not clear about the motive behind the murder but suspected that radical Islamists, who were also involved in previous murders of secular writers, bloggers and publishers, must be involved.
‘We suspect the extremists for the murder, as Nazim was critical about religion in his Facebook writings’, he said.
Banned militant outfit Ansarullah Bangla Team has so far been accused of murdering six secular writers, bloggers and publishers since the murder of secular writer and blogger Avijit Roy on Dhaka University campus in February 2015.
Eight suspected ABT members who were arrested at different times are now in jail in the cases of murdering Avijit Roy and publisher Faisal Arefin Dipan, police officers said.
Nazim’s murder has drawn widespread protest and criticism in the country and in the international community.
Secular youth-led platform Ganajagaran Mancha held a protest rally in the capital’s Shahbagh on Friday, demanding immediate arrest of the murderers.
The Mancha spokesperson Imran H Sarkar said communal and militant forces were hatching a conspiracy to stop the practice of free-thinking and secularism forever in this soil.
‘But unabated killing of secular people is going on due to the government’s lackadaisical attitude in curbing radical Islamists’, he alleged.
He also said Nazimuddin was murdered to hush-up the protests at the killing of Comilla college student Sohagi Jahan Tonu.
The US Department of State in a statement on Friday condemned the murder of Nazim saying, ‘he was apparently killed for speaking out against violent extremism in Bangladesh’.
Meanwhile, Nazim was laid to rest at his ancestral graveyard in Sylhet on Friday.
After a namaz-e-janaza at their house premises at Tuka Bharaut village in Beanibazar, Nazim’s body was buried at the family graveyard at around 11:30am.
The body of Nazim reached his village home at around 6:30am, Nazim’s maternal cousin Sadek Azad said.

News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net