What Nur Hossain had been doing to Nazrul Islam since February was nothing short of a crime thriller.
Narayanganj city panel mayor Nazrul was abducted on April 27 in broad daylight, when he was returning home after attending a hearing on a case filed three months ago by a nephew of Nur, the prime accused in a case involving the abduction and killing of Nazrul and six others.
On February 1, work to widen an old narrow road in Mijmiji Chowdhury Para in Siddhirganj upazila of Narayanganj was going on as usual. Some structures beside the road had to be taken down for the work, a few residents told these correspondents.
In the morning, workers went to demolish some shops in front of the house of a local resident named Mobarak Ali.
An altercation broke out between Mobarak, 65, and Nazrul, 42. Although Nazrul was not the contractor, being the local ward councillor, he was overseeing the construction of the road under a city corporation project.
Witnesses said the altercation had soon turned into a scuffle and neighbours had to interfere to stop them.
But the matter did not end there. Witnesses said it was rather the beginning of a showdown of local “gangster” led by “Mafia don” Nur Islam.
Nur was the vice-president of the local unit of the ruling Awami League, the party that has been in power since 2009.
Reportedly, Mobarak called up Nur and complained against Nazrul. Requesting anonymity, some local residents said Mobarak is Nur’s cousin.
Less than an hour or so later, more than a dozen large microbuses arrived at the locality. Nearly 100 men got off from the microbuses and started marching towards the Mijmiji Chowdhury Para road.
“They were carrying firearms, sharp weapons, hockey sticks, bamboo sticks and iron rods,” a witness said. “They shot a few blank rounds to spread panic in the area.”
However, the armed goons did not find Nazrul because some of his associates had informed him about them and helped him flee the area.
Having failed to get a hold of Nazrul, the goons indiscriminately ransacked a number of shops along the roadside.
Although some policemen were stationed in the area, witnesses said the gangsters did not care. A witness said: “The attackers were hurled abuse at the policemen and told them to go away.”
For about an hour, the entire neighbourhood remained panic-struck. Many shopkeepers pulled down the shutters to save their belongings.
A number of residents said they knew those men. “We knew them. They were all Nur Hossain’s men,” said a shopkeeper.
After the mob left the area, Nazrul Islam came back and saw the devastation.
The next day, Nur Hossain came to the area to visit the vandalised shops. His motorcade consisted of more than a dozen microbuses and he was accompanied by a gang of more than 100 men, some of whom were carrying firearms and wooden sticks.
Suddenly, some of Nur’s armed bodyguards spotted a local photographer taking pictures. They assaulted the photographer and took away his camera.
Yasin Mia, a fugitive accused in the sensational seven murder cases, was with Nur.
Nur announced that he would compensate the shopkeepers for their damage and gave the money to his close associate Yasin.
Some shop-owners, who were victims of the vandalism, told these correspondents that they had not taken Nur’s “dirty money.”
Meanwhile, behind all these visible developments, another plot against Nazrul was being cooked up.
On February 1, Mobarak Ali’s son Ali Hossain filed the criminal case with Siddhirganj police station against Nazrul and 24 others.
For a man with as little education as Ali, who is a local rickshaw renting agent, the computer-composed FIR was far too well written.
In the FIR, he termed Nazrul “a notorious local criminal” and gave a vivid description of how Nazrul had brutally beaten and injured him, his father and one of his aunts.
However, the account of the alleged beating had very little resemblance with the descriptions the witnesses had given of the incidents on that day.
While witnesses said it was Nur’s men who did all the vandalism on that day, Ali Hossain, in his case statement, said the vandals had been Nazrul and his “gang members.”
The Dhaka Tribune correspondents went to Mobarak’s house on Friday. Mobarak’s wife Aklima Begum told these correspondents that soon after Nazrul’s abduction and killing, her husband had left home without telling her anything and had not come back since.
She also said she was ill but her husband had not contacted her in all these days.
Ali Hossain, the eldest of their five sons, was not home either. According to Aklima, a few days before the abductions, Ali went to Bogra to hire rickshaw-pullers for his business.
“He [Ali] has not returned home yet because he got scared after he heard about Nazrul’s abduction and murder,” said Aklima, adding that her son had several cases filed against him. She, however, could not give any details about those cases.
Her other sons Ohid, 24, and Shahid, 26, run a truck owned by their father. Two of their other brothers work in a local readymade garment factory.
When these correspondents were talking to Aklima, Ohid came home.
Both of them said none of the brothers had been in the area during the February 1 vandalism. They also could not say anything in favour of Ali’s claim that Nazrul had beaten them up.
When the reporters showed them a copy of the case file, both of them said they did not have any idea that Hossain had lodged such a case.
“Someone else must have filed the case using my son’s name,” Aklima said.
When asked about their connection to Nur Hossain, they reacted angrily.
“Just because of we are related with him, you cannot come and ask us so many questions!” Ohid said.
It was because of the case filed by Ali that Nazrul had kept away from Narayanganj for a few days.
Nazrul’s attorney Anisur Rahman Dipu said he had wanted to stay away from the area until securing an advance bail from the High Court in March. The High Court told him to surrender before the Narayanganj district court in six weeks, which was supposed to end on April 29.
On April 27 – the day he was abducted – Nazrul came to surrender before the court.
Dipu, who was not at work on that day, told the Dhaka Tribune that he had learnt from his apprentice that Nazrul had come to meet him before surrendering.
“When he came to me a few days before April 27, Nazrul told me that somebody had been following him in a car. He suspected that his rivals might harm him,” Dipu said.
Nazrul surrendered before the court and secured the bail he desired, but that was not enough to save him from the abductors who picked him up from in front of the court, killed him and six others, and dumped their bodies in the Shitalakkhya River.
