Three hours after war criminal Abdul Quader Molla had been executed on December 12, Jubo League leader Mehedi Hasan alias Joj Miah frantically ran to the rooftop of his Sharashkati residence to call police for protection.
He had been tense since afternoon as activists of Jamaat-e-Islami and its student wing Islami Chhatra Shibir announced from a rally in the Sharashkati market that Joj would be slaughtered if Quader Molla was executed.
Now around 1am activists of Jamaat-e-Islami and its student wing Islami Chhatra Shibir were calling out his name and were trying to break into his three-storey house.
Joj called Liakot Ali, the in-charge of Sharashkati police outpost in Joynagar of Kolaroa, among others.
“Please, save me!” pleaded Joj.
His elder brother Abdur Rahman and nephew Abdus Salam were also calling people, making similar pleas. Joj’s nephew called a constable named Hasan at the outpost. They requested the police to at least fire a couple of blank shots to drive away the attackers.
Joj lived in a compound of closely-knit houses inhabited by his relatives, who cried for help with all possible dispatches, informing their contacts about the news of Jamaat-Shibir attack.
One of the attackers shouted: “Joj Miah, either you come out, or we will shoot your relatives dead and burn their houses!” The attackers were carrying machetes, iron bars and torches.
Joj kept flashing his torch in the direction of the police outpost in a desperate bid to draw attention of the law enforcers, who had advised him to find an escape route on his own.
The nearby police outpost is only two minutes’ walk.
Police later said they could not leave for the spot to protect the outpost although at least 16 policemen were at the outpost that night.
Joj had to give in, luring the attackers to three houses away by jumping over the adjacent rooftops and then climbing down a tree to surrender himself.
The Jamaat-Shibir men paraded Joj on the main road of Sarashkati Bazar, hurling abuse at him all the way.
“Mind your language. I am a man of honour,” Joj protested. But they did not stop.
Joj was taken to a culvert on the main road, less than 500 metres from his house. His groans broke the silence of the night as he was slaughtered. All of Joj’s fingers were cut off, apparently during his fight with them.
Joj’s niece Tania Sultana told Abdur Rahman about the place Joj was lying dead. Rahman and several relatives went out around 3am to bring the body.
The police did not come until 10am next morning.
The murder was not unexpected to anyone in the village. Many, in fact, said it was not even a matter to guess.
Just an hour before the killers went to Joj’s house, former Awami League president of Kolaroa ward 6 Azizur Rahman had been chopped to death in his own house around midnight.
“What are the police for if they do not protect a person in danger?” said an infuriated Rita Sultana, Joj’s widow with two children. “Can you please make it sure that we get justice?” she told this correspondent on December 28.
Joj’s 10-year-old son Abul Kalam Azad was the first person to begin describing how his father was slaughtered like “a cow or a goat.”
Locals said at the morgue the superintendent of police told Sharashkati police outpost in-charge Liakot: “It is not Jamaat-Shibir, but you who killed Joj Miah.” Local Awami League leader Sarder Mujib echoed the SP.
Liakot, however, came up with a different version of the incident.
“I knew Joj only by his name and never met him. He did not call me that night,” he said. But Sharashkati police outpost’s second-in-command Asad, who was present at the outpost on the night Joj was killed, admitted that Joj had called Liakot.
Liakot’s relation with Joj is well known to the locals: Joj was fond of fishing and Liakot would take a good share of his catch.
Asad claimed that they had been besieged by a large number of Jamaat-Shibir activists at the outpost that night and that their high-ups had prioritised protecting the outpost first. Asked if they had sought reinforcement on that night, Asad could not find an answer.
The only action taken against Liakot so far was closing him to the Satkhira police lines. He said he was currently performing election duty.
This is how things always were with the Sharashkati police outpost throughout 2013. In August, a local Jamaat leader was freed within two hours of arrest allegedly after Jamaat-Shibir men had held the police hostages.
Liakot claimed that he had bailed the Jamaat leader as he had fallen ill.
In an apparent publicity stunt, police arrested a Jamaat activist and suspected murderer Mukul Hossain on December 27 in connection with Joj’s killing.
The Dhaka Tribune investigation found evidence still left at the crime scene as of December 28 – even after two weeks of the murder – such as the nasal drop that fell from Joj’s pocket and the newspaper has a photograph of it. Joj had bought it for her daughter’s cold.
The findings of the Dhaka Tribune investigation are substantiated by locals’ suspicion of police’s having a link with influential Jamaat politicians. They accuse Kolaroa police station’s Officer-in-Charge Shah Dara Khan of having relations with Jamaat men.
They told this correspondent that the local Jamaat activists had often claimed in public that the OC and the SP were their men and so they could do anything.
The OC is still posted at Kolaroa although a new SP took over on December 15.
Even after all this the law and order has not improved in Satkhira. The local journalists cannot yet visit most places outside the district town and those who come from Dhaka to help their local colleagues have to work in disguise.
Statistics of about a dozen murders that took place in the past two months show that half of those had taken place in areas under Kolaroa police station.
Kolaroa can be considered a microcosm of police performance in maintaining law and order in Satkhira district where over three dozen people, including 16 ruling party activists, had been killed since war criminal Delawar Hossain Sayedee was sentenced to death on February 28 last year.
OC Shah Dara claimed to have done everything in his capacity to ensure security in the area.
“Please evaluate if I am right or wrong. We are dealing with a situation resulting from a political crisis,” he said, adding that Jamaat’s violence had been widespread on the night Joj was killed and it had taken them a while to move a kilometre removing hundreds of trees felled on the roads.
When told that the evidence was still there at the crime scene, the officer only said he would look into the matter.
The lax security arrangement has strengthened the Jamaat-Shibir men to an extent that they dare even wash the blood off their body and clothes openly at a local market following a murder.
On November 26 just after killing Deyara Union’s Jubo League General Secretary Mahbudur Rahman Babu, 32, in Mirzapur area, they went to a sweet shop at Kolaroa’s Deyara Bazar and washed the blood off their clothes as if it was dirt.
Hours later, they killed local Swechchhasebak League General Secretary Rabiul Islam in Deyara village.
These are not the only stories of a weak police performance in Satkhira. In 2012, the police sat idle as Jamaat men burnt houses of Hindus in Fatepur and Chakdah areas.
The charge sheets submitted by the police in two cases filed over the incident prompted the district judge court’s public prosecutor to plead “no confidence” against the investigation. The masterminds were let go off intentionally in the charge sheet as mentioned by the prosecutor at the court.
Top Satkhira politicians said evidence was aplenty now to substantiate a warm “institutionally established” relationship between the police and Jamaat-Shibir men. They said only money could ensure such a sustained relationship for years.
“Police officers and others in the administration in Satkhira are paid the same amount of their salary by Jamaat every month,” said an anonymous senior politician, summing up a discussion with a magistrate.
When contacted, the new Satkhira SP, Chowdhury Manzurul Kabir, angrily refused to make any comment.