Law-enforcers threatened me: Jihad\\\'s father

The law-enforcers had picked up ‘Jihad’s father Nasir Uddin moments after an announcement that there was no sign of anybody down an abandoned pipe. Nasir claimed he was ‘threatened in the name of ‘Rab’ to tell the ‘truth’. Nasir was released on Saturday afternoon after the local people lifted the body of his four-year-old son from the bottom pit of a 600 feet deep abandoned water pipe of an abandoned pump house in Dhaka’s Shahjahanpur Railway Colony, 23 hours after he fell into the 14-diametre pipe on Friday afternoon. Jihad was rushed to Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH) the doctor declared him dead after arrival. Before Jihad’s body was found at the bottom end of the pipe, drama was unfolding one after another after the child slipped into the pipe around 4pm on Friday. Being informed, fire Brigade and Civil Service men with modern equipment started their drive to rescue the minor alive. After about 20-hour-long 2 phases of unyielding operation by the firefighters to trace the boy down, locals finally found him at the bottom end of the old steel pipe and lifted him in an unconscious state. Before locals lifted pulled Jihad’s body out, fire service men declared the 2nd of their 2 futile rescue operation postponed around 2:30pm on Saturday. Before that, the rescuers sent down a camera there but said no-one was there. Later, State Minister for Home Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal expressed his doubts whether the whole thing was a hoax. Police sprang into action after that. Nasir, a night guard at Motijheel Model School, spoke to reporters at his brother-in-law’s house at the Railway Colony. Plain clothes men picked him up around 3am on Saturday saying journalists would pester him if he were at the scene, he claimed. But at the police station, he was told that his son was not spotted by a camera sent down the pipe. The law keepers suspected Jihad had been hidden somewhere else, he claimed. ‘They told me ‘tell us if you have animosity with anyone, or if you have hidden your son. If you don’t, then Rab will beat you up. Then you’ll have to tell the truth,’ Nasir alleged. Police did not respond for comments. Nasir said two children saw his son falling into the pit and several women had heard him scream from down the pipe. ‘Neighbours told me about it. Some children heard him crying, ‘mother, save me’, Nasir said before breaking down in tears. He said he would sue the contractor firm and the engineer. ‘I demand justice,’ the grief-stricken father said, according to a news agency.