The body of a former leader of the Students’ Federation of Bangladesh, Julfikar Ahmed Shakil, was exhumed for autopsy on Wednesday, about 11 months after he was shot to death during the student-led mass uprising in August 2024.
A team of police, complying with a court order, exhumed the body from his family graveyard in Bhola’s Vhelumia union for conducting an autopsy as he was buried without a post-mortem examination.
Bhola district assistant commissioner and executive magistrate Sayyeed Mahmud Bulbul was present while the body was exhumed.
Shakil’s family members, Students’ Federation’s Dhaka city president Al Amin Rahman, and sub-inspector Kabir Hussain of Dhaka’s Mirpur police station, the investigation officer of the case of killing Shakil, among others, were also present.
SI Kabir said that Shakil’s body was buried without an autopsy due to non-availability of police and doctors after he succumbed to his injuries on August 7, 2024.
He said that the body would be buried in the same grave after an autopsy at Bhola Sadar Hospital.
Al Amin, in a press release, expressed frustration over the process of trying the perpetrators of the massacre during the uprising.
He alleged that one year of the uprising had already passed but there was no visible progress in serving justice.
Shakil is a former organising secretary of the Dhaka city unit of the Students’ Federation of Bangladesh, the student wing of the Ganosamhati Andolan.
He was seriously wounded on August 4 during the uprising in the capital’s Mirpur when the activists of Awami League’s associate organisations including Juba League and Chhatra League attacked a students’ rally there. Â
He succumbed to his injuries at the National Institute of Neurosciences and Hospital on August 7.
