'Underage driver was out on a joyride'

The speeding car at which Uttara police shot live rounds during a chase on Monday afternoon was being driven by an underage boy.

The teenage boy, son of a Supreme Court lawyer, was out with three friends on a joyride and didn't have a driving license, said a source close to the boy's family.

He sped off when police signalled him to pull over at a checkpost on Jasimuddin Road.

"As police chased the car, the driver went reckless and hit several cars, rickshaws and rickshaw-vans.

To prevent them from getting away, police shot at the car," said Abu Bakar Miah, officer-in-charge of Uttara East Police Station.

At one stage, the driver and his friends, all A-level students, fled on foot after ditching the white station wagon on Road 9/C, Uttara Sector 5.

Following recent attacks on checkposts, policemen have been asked to keep at least one man on standby with a loaded gun and open fire the moment they are under attack.

According to Bangladesh Road Transport Authority, the car was registered to SC lawyer AKM Asiful Haque who lives in the capital's New Eskaton area.

When this correspondent went to the address yesterday, the security guards said there was none in the apartment.

Asiful was in London and his wife and children were away, they said.

The source close to the family said the four boys, all from wealthy families, narrowly escaped the police firing. "Severely traumatised, one of them is undergoing treatment at a private hospital in the city."

Asiful's only son drove the car out when the driver was out for lunch, the source said.

The station wagon was in police custody and a general diary was filed in this connection.

In another incident of reckless driving on October 12, underage Fareez Rahman rammed his SUV into two rickshaws while racing with another car in Gulshan allegedly in a drunken state. Four people were injured in the incident.