A sensational case of fabricating a political murder accusation has been uncovered in Gazipur, where the father of a man killed over an extramarital affair filed a case against former prime minister Sheikh Hasina and 167 others, falsely claiming his son was a victim of the July uprising.
The forgery was caught by the Police Bureau of Investigation (PBI), which confirmed that the killing had no political connection whatsoever.
On 3 October 2024, the victim’s uncle, Rashidul Islam, filed a case at Sreepur police station stating that Abu Sayeed was hacked to death inside a salon on the night of 2 October. The sole accused was a man named Khalil.
Exactly one month later, the victim’s father, Rafiqul Islam, filed another case in the Gazipur court with a completely different narrative. He claimed that on 5 August, on the orders of Sheikh Hasina and Obaidul Quader, his son was injured by bullets and hatchet blows in the Sreepur flyover area and later died at a hospital.
The existence of two contradictory versions of the same incident raised suspicion among investigators.
PBI Sub-Inspector Shah Kamal, tasked with investigating the father’s case, spoke with local administration officials and residents. He confirmed that Abu Sayeed had an extramarital relationship with a married woman from a neighbouring area, and it was over this affair that he was hacked to death.
“There was no connection whatsoever to any political movement,” Shah Kamal said. “This false and fabricated case was filed with the aim of taking the incident in a completely different direction.”
After the PBI investigation exposed the truth, Rafiqul Islam admitted to fabricating the case. When asked why he filed a false case against 167 people, he said he acted on the advice of a lawyer. He refused to disclose the lawyer’s name.
Rafiqul admitted that his son was hacked to death inside a salon and that he does not know any of the people he named in the case. After a local police officer told him he would not get justice through the false case, he recently withdrew it from court.
Under Bangladesh’s penal code, filing a case with false accusations is a punishable offence carrying up to seven years’ imprisonment and a fine. However, no legal action has been taken against Rafiqul Islam so far. Even the PBI has not recommended any punitive measure against the complainant.
Although over 800 deaths occurred during the July uprising, a troubling trend has emerged of using that tragedy as a shield to name thousands of innocent people as accused. The Abu Sayeed murder is a glaring example, investigators said.
The recent DC Conference also instructed the speedy resolution of such false cases. However, legal experts believe that encouraging ordinary people to commit such forgeries on lawyers’ advice or for political gain is putting the justice system at risk.
