A physically challenged boy was not spared during the wholesale arrests in sabotage cases filed by the police over the vandalisms during the students’ street protests for reforming government job quota since July 18.  Â
The 16-year-old boy, Md Ashik, who holds a physically challenged identify card issued by department of social services, was arrested by a member of 10-12 police from her mother’s rented house of 343 Purbo Nakhalpara in Tejgaon in Dhaka.
Ashik’s mother Morsheda Begum, on the Dhaka Chief Metropolitan Magistrate’s Court premises on Tuesday, said that the Tejgaon police on Sunday night arrested her son on allegation of sabotage although he had no involvement in the student movement.
Tejgaon police station’s officer-in-charge Md Mohsin told ¶¶Òõ¾«Æ· that Ashik was arrested on the spot of protests being a healthy man.   Â
He said that Ashik confessed to being involved in setting fire to Dhaka Elevated Expressway’s toll plaza in Teggaon on July 19. Â
‘I have no idea if he is physically challenged or not,’ he said.
The mother, who a worked as domestic help, said that Ashik cannot walk without support of stick.
She holding the identify card of her son on the court compound said that Ashik used to work as an employee of a scotch-tape factory before he was arrested by the police.
The mother, who came to the court to provide her son clothes, was not allowed to meet on the ground of security reason.
Ashik was among the 483 arrested people, who have been produced by the police to the Dhaka Chief Metropolitan Magistrate’s Court from 40 police stations in the capital in different sabotage cases.
Two courts of metropolitan magistrates Jashim Udidn and Moinul Islam sent 466 suspected accused to the Dhaka Central Jail and remanded 17 others in police custody for three days for interrogation in the sabotage cases.
Dhaka Metropolitan Police has arrested about 1,500 people as suspects in at least 50 cases over sabotage during the students’ movement.
