Guwahati, May 30: The prime accused who allegedly incited a mob to torch Batadrava police station in central Assam’s Nagaon district, died in a road mishap while trying to escape from police custody on Sunday night, official sources said.
Nagaon superintendent of police, Leena Doley informed mediapersons on Monday that the incident took place at Raidongia when the arrested accused, Ashiqul Islam, allegedly attempted to jump out of a moving police vehicle only to be hit by an escort vehicle.
“Three police personnel who were in the escort vehicle, including a sub-inspector, a constable driver and a home guard, were injured in the incident,” Doley said.
According to reports, Ashiqul had surrendered before the Nagaon police, following which he was taken into police custody.
“The accused had confessed during interrogation that he had illegal firearms at his residence at Juria. Thereafter, our search team recovered one 7.62 mm pistol, one .22 pistol and ammunition including seven rounds of live bullets, and a mobile phone. We also recovered the red T-shirt, worn by him on the day of the Batadrava police station torching incident,” Doley said.
“After seizure of the items, Ashiqul was being brought to the police station, when on the way back, he made an attempt to escape by jumping out of the moving vehicle only to be hit by the escort vehicle that lost control. He was critically injured and rushed to a hospital (Nagaon Civil Hospital) where doctors declared him dead,” the SP said.
She said that the ongoing investigation so far has revealed that Ashiqul was involved in several dacoity cases in Nagaon district.
“We are conducting a technical analysis of the call records on his mobile phone to find out if there were others who might have incited him. As of now, we have arrested eleven accused, including Islam,” the SP said.
An irate mob had stormed into Batadrava police station on May 21, attacked police personnel, vandalised property and set the old police station building on fire, following the alleged custodial death of a fish trader.
Video footage aired by television channels showed a girl in her teens pouring inflammable liquid on four two-wheelers parked at the police station and a woman lighting a matchstick and setting the vehicles on fire.
Reacting to the death of the prime accused, Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said that the state police would gradually get to the bottom of the case within the ambit of law and arrest all those involved in the incident.
Meanwhile, AIUDF MLA Aminul Islam said that the trend was similar to an incident in Jorhat while observing that the circumstances leading to the death of Ashiqul were “suspicious and mysterious.”
In December last year, Niraj Das (Kola Lora), the prime accused in the mob lynching of an AASU leader in Upper Assam’s Jorhat town died in a road mishap after he jumped out of a police vehicle while he was being taken to Mariani police station, only to be allegedly hit by an escort vehicle in the wee hours amid dense fog and darkness.
IANS