Former Bangladesh Chhatra League Secretary Ishaque Ali Khan Panna, whose body was found in a remote border village in Meghalaya six days after he left his home in Dhaka on August 22, was “throttled” to death, a preliminary observation following an autopsy on the body has said.
“To the best of my knowledge and belief, the cause of death is due to asphyxia caused by throttling,” the Khliehriat assistant surgeon of the Sub-Divisional Medical and Health Office, East Jaintia Hills District, noted in the opinion section of the post-mortem document.
Panna’s “tongue was protruded”, there were bruises near the left ear, an abrasion on his left palm and “lacerated wounds on lower part of right orbital region”. He wore a “grey track pant, a navy blue T-shirt and a grey underwear”. While his ring finger was found broken, the ring that he wore was missing.
Meghalaya police sources said they suspect the border crossing facilitator as the most likely killer of Panna who sought to cross into safety in India following the change in government in Bangladesh.
However, they are puzzled by the inexplicable resort to misrepresentation of facts by Border Security Force’s (BSF) Meghalaya Frontier IG Harbux Singh Dhillon who, on August 25, claimed that Panna’s body lay at Donacherra in Bangladesh’s Sylhet district. “We need to know what motivated the BSF IG to misrepresent facts,” a state police officer said.
A press release issued by the East Jaintia Hills District SP on August 28 says that an “unknown male body in a semi-decomposed state was found lying at the betel nut plantation located in the Dona Bhoi area” which is “approximately 1.5 kms from the Indo-Bangladesh border. One Bangladeshi passport bearing the name of Ishaque Ali Khan Panna was recovered from the dead body”.
Panna, his relatives in Bangladesh claimed, carried US$1,500 and about Rs 30,000 on his person when he left his Banani home in Dhaka. Besides, he wore a gold chain, a smart watch and had an iPhone 13 in his pocket. It appears that none of these items could be accounted for at the spot where his semi-decomposed body was found.
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While Panna’s relatives Northeast News spoke with said that he had a previous history of a minor heart attack, the official cause of death indicated he was overpowered, moments after he crossed into Indian territory, before his belongings were stolen. Police sources found it odd that no BSF detachment at Dona (in Umkiang), where the body was found, made any attempt to track Panna after his disappearance was reported in the media.
On his part, Dhillon dismissed suggestions that BSF troops shot Panna when he tried to cross the border. Terming such allegations as “absolute lie”, Dhillon had insisted that Panna’s body lay at its spot in Donacherra for five to six hours before it was moved by Bangladeshi authorities.
