Boy found murdered 5 days into missing

Police recovered the body of a murdered schoolboy in Ghatail upazila under the district yesterday, five days after he went missing.

The deceased was Atik Hasan, 14, son of expatriate Billal Hossain of Kutubpur village in Sakhipur upazila and a Class VIII student of Kutubpur Rowshan High School.

Police and the victim's family members said Atik went out of the house on Saturday morning to go school, but did not return.

Finding no trace of the boy, his mother Aiysha Begum filed a general diary with Sakhipur Police Station on Monday.

Sakhipur police later detained two friends of Atik -- Rasel, 18, and Wasim, 15 -- of the same village and interrogated them.

Following their confession, a joint team of Ghatail and Sakhipur Police Stations recovered Atik's body with slit throat from a sal forest at Deopara in Ghatail upazila yesterday noon.

Contacted, Mohammad Kamal Hossain, officer-in-charge (OC) of Ghatail Police Station, said Atik had taken video footage of his friends taking drugs with his mobile phone, and there was a dispute with his friends in this regard.

Centring the dispute, Atik's friends strangled him and then slit his throat, the OC said.

"We are launching drives at different places to arrest the others involved in the killing," he added.

The body was sent to the Tangail Medical College Hospital morgue for autopsy.