DHAKA: Five Bangladeshi health workers have been arrested on murder charges after a social media post accused them of failing to provide aid to a man who died during last year’s revolution, a prosecutor said Sunday.
The case, which has generated widespread attention after the Facebook post resulted in criticism online of the medics, concerns the death of a rickshaw puller, Mohammed Ismail.
Hospital workers say the five are innocent and that they risked their lives repeatedly to help wounded protesters.
More than 800 people died in the student-led demonstrations that culminated in the ouster of Sheikh Hasina’s government on August 5, according to the interim authorities who subsequently took power.
Ismail was shot in the head on July 19, 2024 during a police crackdown in the Rampura suburb of the capital Dhaka, local media reported at the time.
A Facebook post showed his bloodied body on the entrance steps of the Delta Health Care Hospital.
“We saw a post on social media,” chief prosecutor Mohammad Tajul Islam, from Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal (ICT), told AFP.
The five – doctor Sadi Bin Shams and four others including nurses – were arrested late on Friday.
“These individuals allegedly denied Ismail access to treatment, leaving him unattended for four hours,” Islam said.
But hospital director Saiful Islam Selim described how the medics had repeatedly defied police orders not to help wounded protesters.
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The area around the hospital was “a battleground” during the revolution, he said, and police and members of the then-ruling party, the Awami League, “ordered us not to treat any protesters”, he said.
“Despite these orders, we defied them multiple times and helped as much as we could,” Selim told AFP.
He said hospital staff had tried to drag Ismail’s body inside the hospital, but retreated after police fired shots.
“We had no choice but to leave the body there,” he said, accusing the court of misdirected investigations.
“The ICT failed to identify the police officer who shot Mohammed Ismail,” he said.
AFP could not independently confirm who shot Ismail. “Instead, they arrested a doctor and other hospital staff who had tried to save lives.”
Ismail’s widow, Lucky Begum, said she wanted “justice”, but added: “I don’t want innocent people to go to prison”.
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