The devotee said, “Father folded his hands and asked for a chance to speak.”
Pir's residence in Kushtia was vandalized and set on fire. Philipnagar, Daulatpur, Kushtia.
“I was standing in front of the gate of the palace in the afternoon. I saw several people marching with sticks and sticks. Then they started vandalizing the gate of the palace. They entered the palace while shouting slogans. Some people started vandalizing. They went to the front of my father’s (Pir) house on the second floor of the palace. They kicked the door open. Inside, they dragged my father out by the throat and started beating him with the rod he was holding. They started beating him randomly on the head. They dragged him down. One of them kept saying, ‘He is still alive, kill him.'”
Jamiron, a devotee of Pir Abdur Rahman who was killed in Philipnagar of Daulatpur upazila of Kushtia, was speaking these words. Another devotee, Rima Khatun, was sitting next to him. Jamiron was injured in the middle finger of his right hand during the attack. He has been receiving treatment at Daulatpur Upazila Health Complex.
Today, Sunday, at around 11 am, we spoke to Jamiron, sitting in a house in front of the court. He said in a tearful voice, “My father was brought down while being beaten. When my father was first taken out, my father folded his hands. He wanted a chance to speak. But no one listened to him the way he was being beaten indiscriminately. When he was brought down and hit his head, face, and nose with a rod, he was only heard to say, ‘Ya Murshid.’ After that, my father could not say anything else.
Jamiron also said that those who came with sticks were about 80 to 90 people in number. Their ages ranged from 15 to 25 years. Some were older. He also said, ‘When we saw them coming, we thought they might be coming for some discussion. But we did not realize that they would vandalize, attack, or kill my father. Later, I realized that they had come prepared. They planned to kill my father.’
Some local residents, on condition of anonymity, said that Pir Abdur Rahman alias Shamim made derogatory comments about the Holy Quran – a 30-second video from a few years ago went viral on social media since last Friday morning. It created anger among people of different classes. In view of this, more than a hundred people gathered in the Abeder Ghat area, half a kilometer away from Shamim’s court yesterday morning. Then after noon, they attacked the court and hacked and beat Shamim to death in the presence of the police.
An 18-minute video circulating on social media showed more than a hundred people chanting slogans on the village’s paved road towards Shamim’s court. A section of the people in the procession entered two one-story pucca buildings and a tin shed of his court. They vandalized the houses including the roof of the building and set them on fire. According to eyewitnesses, five to seven people inside the court were injured during the attack. The others ran away. Fire service members arrived and put out the fire.
