Police have arrested five more persons in three separate cases filed for burning the body of a man after lynching him at Patgram in Lalmonirhat district after raising the allegation of desecrating the holy Quran against him.
Patgram Police Station OC Sumanto Kumar Mohant confirmed this on Monday morning.
One of the arrested man is identified as Burimari Central Jame Mosque khadem Jobed Ali, 61.
So far, total 10 people have been arrested till today in connection with the incident.
Several hundreds of people have been made accused in the cases filed with Patgram Police Station for burning the body of Shahidun Nabi Jewel after lynching him.
On Saturday, the law enforcers nabbed another five persons. They are Ashraful Alam, 22, Bayezid, 24, Rafiq, 20, Masum Ali, 35, and Shafiqul Islam, 25.
On October 29, Shahidun Nabi Jewel, son of Abdul Wazed Mia of Shalbon Mistrypara area in Rangpur city, went to Burimari alongwith his friend Sultan Jobayer to bring some medicines from India as he had been suffering from mental illness. They offered Asr prayer at Burimari Central Jame Mosque in the afternoon.
Jewel, 50, was the former librarian at Rangpur Cantonment Public School and College and a former student of the Department of Library Science of Dhaka University.
He was reportedly struggling with psychological problems after he recently lost his job as a librarian at Rangpur Cantonment Public School and College.
After the prayer, he was taking off a copy of holy Quran from the shelf. Mistakenly, some copies of Quran and Hadith fell on his feet. At that time, Jewel picked up the copies of holy Quran and kissed them. But, the muazzin of the mosque got involved in an altercation with him over the matter. Afterward, some people from nearby area came to the mosque and dragged both Jewel and Jobayer out of the mosque. They confined the duo to a room of a local union parishad building.
A rumour was spread in the evening that two young men were nabbed and detained for desecration of the Holy Quran. Being furious, the angry mob snatched Jewel breaking the door of the union parishad building and then beat him to death.
Later, the angry mob dragged Jewel's dead body to the Patgram-Burimari highway where his body burnt into ashes. They also chanted slogans blocking the highway with burning tyres.
Police admitted Jewel's critically injured friend Jobayer to a local hospital.
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