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Published : 23 Jan 2026, 06:54 PM
A teacher at Dhaka’s Sharmin Academy has appeared in court after being arrested over allegations of child abuse, with police seeking five days to question him.
Pabitra Kumar was arrested in Mirpur early on Friday and presented before a Dhaka Metropolitan Magistrate over accusations of abusing a four-year-old student at the school in Paltan.
The court has set the hearing for the remand application on Jan 27.
Metropolitan Magistrate Aminul Islam Junaid sent Pabitra to jail while fixing the date for the next hearing.
Prosecution Police Sub-Inspector (SI) Ruknuzzaman said the investigating officer, SI Md Nur Islam of Paltan Model Police Station, could not attend the hearing, prompting the court to set a new date.
While standing in the dock, Pabitra was asked by several journalists about the alleged abuse.
“Because of the situation and circumstances, the incident happened,” he said. “The way the abuse is being described to make it viral, the child was not beaten like that.”
The allegation involves a 4-year-old student who had joined Sharmin Academy just seven days before the incident.
A video of the alleged abuse went viral on social media, prompting the child’s mother to file a case at Paltan Police Station on Thursday.
The case names Pabitra Kumar Barua and his wife, Sharmin Jaman, as suspects.
After the incident became public, the school was shut and the suspects went into hiding.
Paltan Police chief Md Mostafa Kamal Khan said on Friday morning Pabitra had been hiding at a relative’s home in Mirpur after the incident.
“The female teacher has not been found yet. Efforts are under way to arrest her,” he said.
CCTV footage that began circulating on Facebook from Wednesday shows a woman dragging the child, dressed in a school uniform, into a room and slapping the child at the doorway.
Inside the room, she appears to complain about the child to another person who was seated there.
The footage shows the frightened child being slapped repeatedly and threatened while seated on a sofa.
At one point, a man approaches the child holding a stapler and presses it several times near the child’s mouth, appearing to threaten to staple it shut.
He is also seen gesturing repeatedly for the child to remain silent.
At one point in the video, the man leaves the room before coming back in and choking the child on the sofa.
The video, which is 4 minutes and 13 seconds long, appears to have been recorded around 1pm on Jan 18.
The footage has triggered widespread outrage online, with many demanding punishment for those involved and urging parents to remain vigilant about the safety of children sent to schools.
