Metiabruz youth’s death sparks protest, kin, locals burn cop bike, attack police
Times of India | 29 January 2024
KOLKATA: Chaos erupted at Metiabruz on Saturday night as locals blocked roads, set fire to a police bike and attacked cops, demanding justice for a 19-year-old youth whose body was found hanging on Friday inside a factory where he was employed. When his body was brought back after postmortem, locals and family members demanded arrest of the factory owner and his brothers.They claimed the boy was killed and that his body bore injury marks. The family alleged the factory owner, who had lent Rs 4,000 to the youth, was pressuring and threatening him to return it.
Cops had to resort to lathi charge to disperse the agitators and RAF was deployed to bring the situation under control.
Sheikh Sagar was found hanging in a garments manufacturing factory on Pilkhana Road on Friday. According to his family, the factory owner had forced him to work since he could not repay the loan.
“He had borrowed Rs 8,000 from the owner to buy a cellphone and repaid Rs 4,000. He had promised to repay the rest, but the factory owner wanted him to work for him in exchange. Sagar wasn’t willing to work there any more. On Friday afternoon, they took him away and beat him up, before we found him dead. We are certain he didn’t die by suicide but was killed and hanged,” a relative told reporters.
After the preliminary postmortem report hinted at death due to hanging, family members and locals staged a protest by keeping his body on the road on Saturday night while demanding a second autopsy and videography of the same. “There are clear signs of assault on his body. We demand justice,” one of the protesters said.
Later, cops arrested five persons — factory owner Sheikh Shakeel Ahmed and his brothers Sheikh Sabir, Sheikh Sohail, another person named Obaidul Ruman Halder and Hasina Bibi — on murder charges based on the complaint lodged by the youth’s family. The men were produced in an Alipore court and remanded in police custody till Feb 9. Hasina will be produced in court on Monday.
Explore Your Financial Landscape with Personalized Credit Insights.