Death of Rumpa: Police get 4 days to grill 'friend'

Police have been granted four days to grill Abdur Rahman Saikat, a friend of Rubaiyat Sharmin Rumpa, over the death of the Stamford University student.

Dhaka's Metropolitan Magistrate Mamunur Rashid issued the remand order on Sunday after police produced Saikat in court seeking seven days for questioning in custody.

Saikat was arrested in connection with a murder case on Saturday, three days after Rumpa was found dead on a Dhaka street.

Saikat's lawyer Abdul Hamid Bhuiyan prayed for the remand to be scrapped but the court turned down his appeal.

"The suspect's father died a week ago. His uncle passed away a week before that. Saikat was called by the DB after the incident and he went to meet them with a clear conscience," he told the court.

He argued that it was unlikely for a person who has lost his father recently to be in a mental state to commit murder. The lawyer also claimed Saikat left Stamford University because of botheration that the girl was causing him.

"The suspect's lawyer has himself admitted that he left Stamford University because the girl was bothering him, which proves that the two had a relationship. Therefore his remand is necessary to analyse all the relevant evidence in the case, including his phone record," said state prosecutor Hemayet Uddin Khan in reply.

Saikat, 22, is studying BBA at Adamjee Cantonment College. According to one of Rumpa's classmates, the two had been seeing each other for several months, but they broke up recently.

Rumpa’s body was found on a street in the capital’s Siddheswari on Dec 4. A case of murder was started by Ramna Police Station's Sub-Inspector Abul Khair on the same day against unidentified suspects due to the mysterious circumstances surrounding the death.

The authorities only identified the body as Rumpa's a day later when it was revealed that she was the daughter of Rokon Uddin, a police inspector posted in Habiganj. She lived with her mother and brother in Dhaka's Malibagh.

Students and teachers of Stamford University subsequently launched protests demanding a proper investigation into the death of Rumpa. One of Rumpa’s classmates later told a TV station that Rumpa had been seeing Saikat, 22, a BBA student of Adamjee Cantonment College, for several months before they broke up recently.

Police later detained Saikat in the capital's Khilgaon on Saturday.

Besides Ramna Police Station, the Detective Branch is also investigating the case, in which the death of Rumpa is mentioned as a murder, but the investigators said they were waiting for the post-mortem examination report to confirm whether it was a murder, or suicide or accident.

The case has baffled police who are yet to find out how Rumpa’s body ended up on a street in the capital’s Siddheswari, about half a kilometre from her home at Shantibagh, on Dec 4 night.

She is presumed to have died after falling from a multi-storey building. The building in front of which Rumpa’s body was found is home to some students of the university. They live on the ground and second floors, but no one could give any information about her.