CNG driver Sumon raped, strangled schoolgirl Tazmin to death: Police

Police have claimed to have solved the murder of schoolgirl Jannatul Tazmin in Cumilla, alleging that CNG driver Sumon raped and strangled her to death after taking her to an isolated area.

Additional Superintendent of Police (Crime) Pankaj Barua disclosed this at a press briefing at the district police superintendent's office at 10:30AM on Saturday.

Police recovered Tazmin's body from a paddy field in Jagatpur village of Lalmai upazila on Thursday (October 8) morning and later identified her.

Tazmin was the daughter of Abdul Alim, a resident of Chatiatala village in Jashore Sadar upazila. She was a seventh-grade student at Farida Bidyayatan School in Cumilla city. According to school authorities, she had not attended classes since February this year.

Her father works for pharmaceutical company Renata in the Cumilla region, and the family lived in a rented house in the city's Racecourse area.

According to police, Tazmin hired a CNG-run autorickshaw in front of the Tisha bus counter in the Paduar Bazar Bishwa Road area on October 8 to return home. The fare was fixed at Tk 300. The driver allegedly told her he would take a shortcut to reach her destination before taking her to an isolated area, where he allegedly raped and strangled her.

Police said Sumon took Tazmin's iPhone from her handbag after the killing and left the bag in the paddy field before fleeing. He later bathed in a pond in front of Kachikata Mosque, travelled to the Bakhrabad area in another CNG-run autorickshaw and hid the phone in bushes beside a pond before leaving for Chattogram.

Police arrested Sumon in Chattogram on Friday (October 9). Acting on information provided by him, investigators later recovered the phone from the bushes near the pond in Bakhrabad.

The allegations were disclosed at the police briefing. Sumon has been accused of rape and murder, according to the police account.