Body of former air force officer Tahsif found in Turag at Uttarkhan, friend Deep recounts last night
The body of former Bangladesh Air Force flight lieutenant K M Tahsif Souri has been recovered from the Turag River in Uttarkhan in the capital. His body surfaced in the water the day after he went missing.
Tahsif was 28 years old. A watch was on his wrist and an iPhone was in his pocket, so police did not have much difficulty identifying him, the report noted. How he died, however, remains unanswered.
On Wednesday, 28 October, at around 4:30pm, Tongi river police recovered the body from the Turag near Rajabari Ghat in Uttarkhan after receiving a call through the national emergency service 999.
Tahsif had left home on the evening of Tuesday, 27 October, and did not return. His autopsy was completed on Thursday, 29 October, but the cause of death is still not known.
Tahsif's father, K M Enayetul Karim, said a friend named Deep came to the house on Tuesday evening and called Tahsif out. Tahsif told his mother he was going downstairs to talk to his friend and left.
The father suspects Tahsif was murdered and thrown into the river. He could not, however, confirm who might have done it or why. A police source said Tahsif used to visit the Rajabari Ghat area from time to time.
On Thursday, that friend, Ahmed Shahriar Reza Deep, spoke to journalists. Deep, who has just completed a civil engineering degree at the Islamic University of Technology, lives in Mohammadpur in the capital and had known Tahsif for about six years.
According to Deep, on 27 October the two of them spent about 10 to 20 minutes starting Tahsif's broken motorcycle, then took it to a workshop for repairs and an oil change. Afterwards they had dinner together at a restaurant in Uttara's RUAP Shopping Complex.
After dinner they left on separate motorcycles and parted around midnight in Uttara's House Building area, Deep said. After reaching home he called Tahsif and found his mobile switched off, and he could not reach him the next morning either.
Deep said he noticed nothing unusual in Tahsif's behaviour that day and has no grounds so far to suspect anyone. He said he is in the same mystery as everyone else.
Dhaka district river police superintendent Abdullah Al Mamun said no visible injury marks were found on Tahsif's body. The inquest report, however, noted bleeding from the nose and a swollen abdomen. Details will be known after the autopsy and forensic results arrive, he said.
A forensic team of the Criminal Investigation Department collected evidence from the scene. The Police Bureau of Investigation has also joined the information-gathering work, according to those concerned.
According to the latest figures from the river police headquarters, river police recovered 430 bodies in the first nine months of this year. Of them, 116 remained unidentified and the cause of death of another 104 could not be determined. Among the recovered bodies, 78 were in the Dhaka region, 63 in Barishal and 60 in Narayanganj.
