A Cumilla-based court on Monday ordered the investigation officer to collect the DNA samples of three suspects over the case of university student Sohagi Jahan Tonu, more than ten years after she was raped and murdered at the Cumilla Cantonment.
All the three suspects are retired army personnel, and their DNAs will have to be matched with the ones found on Tonu’s clothes following the crime, according to the order issued by Chief Judicial Magistrate Mominul Haque.
Earlier on Monday, investigation officer, Police Bureau of Investigation (PBI) Inspector Tarikul Islam, asked the court for a permission to cross-match the DNAs. He was responding to an earlier court order, which had asked him to provide an update on the ten-year-old case.
Tonu’s father, Yar Hossain, was present at the court during the hearing.
Speaking with reporters on the court premises, Yar Hossain said that during his London exile, Prime Minister Tarique Rahman had pledged to ensure justice for the murder. Now that Tarique is in power, Yar Hossain would personally meet the PM and demand justice for his daughter, he told reporters.
If justice is not served within a month he would "commit suicide," Yar Hossain warned.
Tonu was a student of history at the Cumilla Victoria Government College.
On 20 March 2016, she went missing at Cumilla Cantonment while staying out on a tuition appointment. As she did not return home in the night, her family launched a lengthy search and finally recovered the body from a bush inside the cantonment.
The following day, Yar Hossain filed a murder case with the Kotwali Model Police Station against unnamed individuals.
Later, investigators found DNA samples of three individuals on Tonu’s clothes. No further progress was made in the case.
Over the past ten years, the hearing in the case was deferred 79 times, investigation agencies were changed three times, and the investigation officer was changed five times.
FP/MI
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