Moulvibazar tea workers demand justice for Priti Urang

Tea workers on Sunday demanded a fair investigation and justice in the death of Priti Urang, a tea worker’s daughter of Mirtinga tea garden in Kamalganj district, who fell to her death from the Mohammadpur flat of the executive editor of the Daily Star.

Puran Urang presided over the protest rally arranged jointly by the Urang Language and Culture Protection Committee and the Tea Workers’ 10-point Settlement Struggle Committee.

Jaharlal Dutta, district secretary of Bangladesh Communist Party, Basad district member and Central General Secretary of Tea Workers Federation Dipankar Ghosh, SM Shubo, Sitaram Bin, Biswajit Nandi, Preeti Urang’s father Lokesh Urang and her mother Nomita Urang, spoke.

Priti’s parents told the gathering that Priti went to work at the Daily Star executive editor Ashfaqul Haque’s house through Moulvibazar district representative of the newspaper, Mintu Deshwara.

From the beginning, they lost touch with her. In two years, they could not meet her even once.

“On the day of Priti’s death, Mintu Deshwara asked us to come to Srimangal,” said Lokesh, the father.

“When Srimangal came, he said Priti was seriously ill and was taken to Dhaka. After going there, we were directly taken to the police station and heard the news of the girl’s death. I came home with the dead body of the girl from the police station.”

“We don’t even know whether our case has been registered at the police station. We just want justice for our daughter’s murder,” he said.

Speakers said that instead of sending the child Priti to school, tea garden journalist Mintu Deshwara, who works for the Daily Star, sent her to work at the residence of Syed Ashfaqul Haque, executive editor of the same newspaper.

At the end of the protest rally, the memorandum was given to the Kamalganj upazila executive functionaries.