Couple in Gazipur's Kuna say attackers broke in and hacked them, police refused to take the case

A couple in the Kuna area under Gacha police station in Gazipur city have alleged that attackers broke into their home and beat and hacked them. Fuad Alam, also known as Fahim, 27, and his wife Nowrin Mohsin, 21, said on Tuesday that police rescued them and took them to hospital after a call to the national emergency number 999, but the police station did not take a case over the attack.

The attack took place late on Sunday night, 25 October. The family home in Kuna is Fuad's ancestral house; after his parents died, he has been living on the second floor of the four-storey building with his wife and two young children.

Fuad Alam said that on Sunday night a group of 15 to 20 attackers cut the home's electricity connection and forced their way inside. The attackers struck him with sticks and machetes and at one point hacked his right hand.

When Nowrin Mohsin tried to save her husband, she was molested and beaten, the couple alleged. She suffered a serious injury to one eye. The attackers snatched cash and mobile phones from them.

Nowrin Mohsin said she had managed to call 999 before her phone was snatched. Gacha police later reached the spot. She alleged that even in the police presence, the attackers threatened to kill the whole family, children included, and told them to leave the house.

Police rescued the injured couple and took them to Shaheed Ahsan Ullah Master General Hospital in Tongi. The couple alleged that when they later went to file a case, Gacha police station refused to take it.

On Tuesday the couple came to the Prothom Alo office in Dhaka's Karwan Bazar to describe the attack and the refusal to register their case. They said they have now left their home and are moving from place to place in fear for their lives.

Fuad Alam alleged that his sister hired goons to carry out the attack in order to deprive them of their share of the ancestral property and drive them from the house. He said they had been beaten in a similar way before, and that a case over that earlier incident exists at Gacha police station.

Asked on Tuesday evening about the refusal to take the case, Gacha police station's officer-in-charge Golam Rabbani told Prothom Alo that no incident of an assault causing injuries was found in the CCTV footage, which is why no case was taken. He said the siblings had previously filed several cases against each other at the police station and in court over the ancestral property dispute.