It seems ruling Awami League lawmaker Abdur Rahman Bodi has made a habit of beating up government officials. His latest victim is an Ukhia upazila engineer named Mostofa Minhaz.

Bodi beat him up for not attending an Upazila Parishad meeting yesterday morning.

The AL lawmaker, however, denied the allegation saying he just rebuked the engineer in the presence of the UNO for skipping the meeting.

Earlier, Bodi, lawmaker of Cox's Bazar-4 constituency, hogged newspaper headlines several times for assaulting school teachers, forest and bank officials, a Roads and Highways engineer, a freedom fighter, a lawyer, among many others.

Wishing anonymity, witnesses said a prescheduled meeting of Ukhia Upazila Development Committee started around 11:00am at the upazila parishad. Bodi attended the meeting as he is an advisor of the committee.

At one stage of the meeting, Bodi asked the Ukhia Upazila Nirbahi Officer (UNO) Hillol Biswas about the absence of Minhaz. Then some other attendees informed Bodi that he was also absent in some of the previous meetings.

Later, Bodi along with the UNO rushed to Minhaz's room, which is on a different floor of the same building, and assaulted him there. Later, the engineer joined the meeting.

Contacted, Minhaz claimed that Bodi physically roughed him up in the presence of the UNO for not participating in the meeting.

He already informed the higher authorities of Local Government Engineering Department (LGED) in Cox's Bazar about the incident, Minhaz added.

Hillol Biswas could not be reached for his comment despite several attempts.