Reckless driving takes couple's lives in city

Seventy-year-old ABM Ataur Rahman and his wife were waiting on a footpath at the East Sheorapara bus stand in the capital to get an auto-rickshaw early Wednesday when a speeding car struck them. 

Ataur was left dead there but the burka of his wife Raushan Ara Begum, 60, got tangled with the car that dragged her around 15 yards until it rammed the road divider and turned upside down. She was also killed.

After the crash around 6:00am, two to three youths came out of the car and ran away, witnesses said. Nobody tried to catch them, said Nur Hossain Nuru who rushed to the spot hearing the sound of the crash.

Raushan's body was lying near the wreck, he added. 

She and her husband had planned to go to their elder daughter's house in Mohammadpur that morning. There they would have had breakfast before heading to Mawa Ghat along with the daughter's family, said Mohammad Raihan, the victims' son who lived with them at their East Sheorapara residence.  

As per the plan, Raihan left home to go to another sister's house close to Mawa Ghat where they all were supposed to meet to go on a cruise on the Padma river.

Around 20 minutes later, he got the news of his parents' death.

“This is not an accident, rather murders,” said Raihan when the correspondent visited him at his house, some 200 yards from the accident spot.

He demanded arrest and trial of the killers.

The incident left injured two others -- a cleaner of Dhaka North City Corporation, Abed Ali, 50, and a driver who was cleaning his car by the road at the moment.

Abed, who was standing close to the couple but looking opposite the direction the car was driven in, was caught unawares and hit. He has been fighting for life at the National Institute of Neuroscience and Hospital in the capital's Agargaon.

The other person who was cleaning his car on the footpath received minor injuries.

A local tea vendor told Nuru that the car had been driven at a speed of at least 100 kilometre per hour when it hit the couple. 

Nuru said that when he had looked inside the damaged car he saw some wine bottles, ice cubes and two-three national ID cards.

Ataur, a retired employee of the agricultural department, and his wife were buried at East Sheorapara Graveyard on Wednesday noon, Raihan said.

Those who had been inside the speeding car could not be arrested until filing of this report around 9:00pm yesterday.

Requesting anonymity, a police official of Dhaka Metropolitan Police said law enforcers had identified the criminals.

A man named Ashique bought the old car about three months back. Police went to Ashique's Shahinbagh residence but he was not home, the police official said.

Police interrogated the security guard of the house, who told them that he had seen Ashique's son Nafis, aged about 22, and a private university student, go out by the car around 2:00am on the day of the accident.

Nafis returned home without the car in the early hours of Wednesday. Within a short time, he and his parents left home, the security guard told police.