Tonu murder: Hope for justice fading
The family of Sohagi Jahan Tonu is losing hope that her brutal murder would be solved anytime soon as the killers are still at large six years on.
On March 20, 2016, Tonu, a student of Cumilla Victoria Government College and also a theatre activist, was raped and murdered at Cumilla Cantonment.
The incident caused national outrage and led to protests from a wide range of people, including students.
"We are getting sick -- the case has made no progress in these years," said Tonu's mother Anwara Begum.
The investigators are just delaying the probe in the name of carrying out the investigation, says a frustrated Anwara.
Since September 2020, the murder case is being investigated by the Police Bureau of Investigation (PBI).
Family members said PBI investigation officer Mujibur Rahman talked to them a year ago, but it seemed to them that the investigators had no interest in probing the murder.
Their assertion is not without any basis: the PBI is yet to make any headway in the probe and none has been arrested in the case.
"The state should stand for justice -- it is shameful that law enforcement agencies have failed to submit a probe report in six years, said Advocate Shahidul Haque Sawpan, a social worker in Cumilla.
Contacted, Rahman, who is also a PBI inspector, said they visited the place of the incident and talked to around 35 people, including some quizzed by CID officials earlier.
He said they were now working on some DNA samples. Tonu's family members will be contacted again if needed, he added.
"We are trying our level best to solve the murder," said PBI chief Banaj Kumar Majumder, while expressing hope that PBI would be able to unravel the mystery of the murder.
But for Tonu's father, Yaar Hossain, who suffered a stroke, it is an agonising wait.
"I am worried that I will not be able to see the killers get punished as my health is not well," he said.
On the night of March 20, 2016, he spotted her lifeless body in a bush. There were injury marks on her nose and the back of her head was smashed.
The following day, he filed a murder case against unidentified people.
However, the police inquest and the first autopsy reports did not mention the preliminary evidence of the murder.
The first autopsy did not find any evidence that the victim was raped before being killed. It also failed to determine the cause of her death.
After examining her clothes at a CID laboratory, the agency's investigators found the presence of three spermatozoa of three males, exposing the flaws of the first autopsy.
Following a court order, Tonu's body was exhumed for a fresh autopsy. But it could neither "determine" the cause of her death nor confirm if she was raped.
After collecting the DNA results from CID, doctors involved in the fresh autopsy said evidence of "intercourse before death" was found.
Tonu's parents rejected both the autopsy reports, saying those were full of wrong information and prepared to save influential people involved in the murder.
"We have now realised that we will not get justice. I am hoping against the hope that the killers would be punished before my death," said a grieving Anwara.