A court has granted bail to Amatullah Bushra, a friend of BUET student Fardin Noor Parash, two months after she was first detained in the case over his death.
Judge Tahsin Iftekhar of the Dhaka Additional Metropolitan Sessions Court-7 granted her interim bail on Sunday. Her bail will continue until police have submitted the investigation report in the case.
On Nov 16, a court scrapped a bail petition from Bushra after she was interrogated in police custody for five days and sent to jail. On December 5, the magistrate’s court rejected her bail petition once more. She then took the matter to the judge’s court, reports bdnews24.com.
The petition was heard on Thursday and the court set Sunday for the decision.
Fardin, 24, left his home in Dhaka’s Demra after lunch on Nov 4, saying he would stay overnight with friends at a residential hall to study and return home after an exam the following day, according to his family. His body was found floating in the Shitalakkhya River in Narayanganj on Nov 7.
An autopsy of the body found multiple injury marks that indicated foul play, according to forensic doctors at the time.
Fardin’s father Kazi Nuruddin named Bushra as a suspect in a case filed at Rampura Police Station on Nov 10.
Bushra knew Fardin through their involvement in the debate team but she claimed the two did not have a romantic relationship. There was video footage of the two of them together on the day he went missing, but there were no indications that she murdered him or forced him to do anything.
Bushra was taken into custody and the court granted police a five-day remand to interrogate Bushra that same day. The remand petition was unopposed as Bushra was not represented by a counsel in court. No bail application was made on behalf of Bushra, who stood in silence throughout the hearing.
However, on Dec 14, police investigators said they had concluded that the 24-year-old took his own life by jumping into the river from Sultana Kamal Bridge in Demra. The conclusion drew criticism from Fardin’s family and from his university colleagues, who refused to believe he had committed suicide.
Students planned a protest over the issue but were invited by the police to go over their findings. After a meeting with police, the students called off their protest, saying they were ‘largely satisfied’ with the evidence brought forward.
However, Fardin’s father Nur Uddin Rana has said he is unconvinced that his son could have committed suicide.