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A Bangladeshi brick-field labourer was beheaded by fellow workers who hoped to redden their masonry by burning his head in a kiln, it was claimed today.
The 26-year-old man was killed on the orders of the owners who were told by a fortune teller that a human sacrifice would yield highly-prized red bricks, police said.
The colour is seen as proof that the bricks, which are green before being fired, have been baked properly and are hence more popular than other shades. Police in the remote town in the north of the country have arrested four suspects and are searching for the owners and fortune teller.
Golam Sarwar Bhuiyan, a local police chief, said: "They said the owners were unhappy as the brick-field was not producing reddish bricks despite enough heating.
“A fortune teller then suggested that the brick-field needed a human sacrifice.” In Bangladesh, like much of the Indian sub-continent, brick making is typically a manual process.
Workers build a deep, circular trench with a firing zone in the middle. New green bricks are stacked at one end of the loop while fully baked ones are at the other. The fire is moved around the circle through vents dug throuh the ground.
Once bricks have been fully dried and then fired, they can be taken out and replaced with new ones. By this simple process, known as a Bull’s Trench Kiln, six labourers, earning around £1.10 a day, can fire up to 25,000 bricks between dusk and dawn.
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