Krishnagar, May 22: Mistaking a 10-year-old boy for a smuggler’s son, BSF jawans picked him up on Saturday morning while he was returning from school, dragged him to their camp at Nadia’s Chapra and beat him up.

The same evening, villagers found an unconscious Nazimul Sheikh in a bush off a road 150 km from Calcutta.

The Class V student was admitted to Chapra block hospital, where he was put on saline drip. On Sunday morning, he was shifted to Shaktinagar Hospital after his condition deteriorated and put under observation.

On regaining consciousness, he spoke to the doctors about the torture he had to suffer.

His father Nasif Sheikh, a farmer, went to the Chapra police station with panchayat chief Ramen Biswas and a couple of hundred angry villagers and met the officer-in-charge demanding the culprits’ arrest.

“We have started a probe,” said Nadia additional superintendent of police Biswarup Ghosh.

The BSF sector commandant, Naimuddin Khan, too, said “we have started a probe”, adding: “But we are yet to receive an investigation report from the police.”

Another BSF officer said the boy had accidentally come in the way of jawans chasing cattle smugglers. “The gang fled but we seized a good number of cattle. The boy was mistaken for a smuggler’s son.”

Nasif said his son had left home around 7 am yesterday for school in nearby Hatkhola, close to the Bangladesh border. “How could the jawans think that Nazimul was a smuggler’s son when he was carrying his schoolbooks? He was merely a spectator when the jawans were chasing the smugglers.”

“I looked for my son throughout Saturday. When I was about to lodge a missing diary, villagers told me that Nazimul was lying in the bush. The BSF personnel repeatedly beat him with lathis and boxed and slapped him,” said Nasif, breaking down.

Debkumar Ghosh, under whom Nazimul was admitted at Shaktinagar hospital, said nothing could be said before 72 hours passed. “He has internal injuries besides external ones. We are carrying out various tests. His condition is critical,” he added.

“The boy was dragged into a jeep, which means a BSF officer was involved in the ass- ault,” said the Chapra MLA, CPM’s Samsul Islam Mollah.