The 19-year-old woman whom Satkhira-4 MP Gazi Nazrul Islam identified as his second wife amid a sensational controversy two months ago was found hanging at his NAM Bhaban flat in Dhaka on Sunday, prompting police to take the lawmaker and his first wife to the police station for questioning.
Mst Mariyam Khatun’s death brings Nazrul and the disputed circumstances surrounding their marriage back under scrutiny barely two months after the controversy led to his expulsion from Jamaat-e-Islami.
Police, however, have yet to determine whether Mariyam died by suicide or was killed. Her body has been sent to Shaheed Suhrawardy Medical College Hospital for an autopsy.
Mohammad Ibne Mizan, deputy commissioner of the Tejgaon Division of Dhaka Metropolitan Police, told reporters around 10pm that Nazrul and his first wife had been taken to the police station for questioning over the incident.
Police received information around 7pm that a body was hanging inside flat 203 of Building No 5 at the NAM Bhaban in Sher-e-Bangla Nagar, he said.
Teams from Sher-e-Bangla Nagar police station, the Criminal Investigation Department, Police Bureau of Investigation and Detective Branch subsequently went to the scene.
Police then learned that the flat belonged to the Satkhira-4 MP.
The CID processed the scene while local police conducted an inquest. The woman was subsequently identified as Nazrul’s second wife, according to the police official.
Earlier reports said Mariyam was found hanging from a ceiling fan inside the flat.
According to an account from a police officer at the scene, Nazrul had lunch with both his wives at the flat on Sunday. They went to separate rooms at around 3:30pm.
At around 5pm, Nazrul reportedly went to call Mariyam but found her room locked.
The video that started it all
The controversy erupted on July 20 when video clips showing Nazrul in an intimate setting with a young woman began circulating widely on social media.
Nazrul subsequently identified the woman as Mariyam and rejected allegations that he was involved in an extramarital relationship. He said she was his legally married second wife.
According to Nazrul, he had married Mariyam on June 17 at her father’s residence in Shyamnagar, Satkhira, with the consent of both families and his first wife, Maksuda Islam.
Nazrul said that on July 13 he went with both wives to an office belonging to Mariyam’s father, Md Masum Billah, in Moghbazar.
He alleged that while they were there, Mariyam’s maternal uncle Obaidullah and several others entered the room, held them hostage and extorted Tk1 lakh.
He further alleged that demands for additional money followed and that private footage was later circulated because of a family dispute.
Maksuda subsequently appeared in a video message confirming that Nazrul had married Mariyam and protesting what she described as slander surrounding their relationship.
Mariyam herself also appeared publicly, wearing a face mask, and identified Nazrul as her husband.
She said the marriage was neither secret nor illicit and maintained that it had taken place with the consent of both families.
Questions over marriage documents
But questions subsequently emerged over the chronology of the marriage.
A CV attributed to Mariyam circulated online bearing Nazrul’s signature and a recommendation dated June 22, five days after the date on which Nazrul said they had married.
The CV reportedly listed her marital status as “unmarried”.
Further questions arose over the marriage registration.
The marriage registrar whose name appeared on the certificate later said he had not been present at the purported wedding and did not know when or where the marriage had taken place.
Reporting at the time said Nazrul maintained that the marriage occurred on June 17.
The controversy intensified as multiple video clips circulated.
In one, Nazrul and Mariyam were confronted by several men in a room.
Nazrul’s subsequent account was that the incident involved extortion and that the intimate footage had been distributed without consent.
Jamaat expels Nazrul
The controversy quickly became a political crisis for Jamaat.
After initially saying it would investigate the allegations, the party’s Central Executive Council met on July 22 and expelled Nazrul under Article 62 of its constitution, saying an organisational investigation had found evidence of “moral misconduct”.
Jamaat subsequently formally informed both the Speaker and the Election Commission of the decision.
Nazrul had been elected from Satkhira-4 on Jamaat’s scales symbol in the February election.
His expulsion was described at the time as the first instance of Jamaat expelling one of its sitting lawmakers.
Two months after that controversy, the young woman at its centre has now been found dead inside the MPs’ residential complex.
CID forensic investigators reached the scene on Sunday evening as police began examining the circumstances surrounding Mariyam’s death.
With police yet to determine whether she took her own life or was killed, the cause and circumstances of her death remain under investigation.