Abdus Samad is a Rajshahi city ward councillor. Apparently he is also a local schoolteacher. But no one recalls seeing him in the last four years. Samad is the chief of Jamaat’s Motihar unit.
The police say he is on the run. Wanted in at least 25 cases (almost all of them violence on or around Rajshahi University campus), Samad, however, is like a king in Buthpara. They say he stays indoors during the day and comes out only after dark.
That is when he holds court and plans future action of the party and its student wing — Jamaat-e-Islami and Islami Chhatra Shibir.
That is one more reason why strangers are not allowed into Buthpara village after dark, lest they hear something not meant for their ears.
This correspondent went into the village one morning last week only to confirm what he had heard in hushed undertones and whispers.
There is a ritual that vendors follow. Vegetable growers humbly knock on Samad’s door and make their offering. Samad’s family gets to have the first pick from every basket that goes to the market.
The Dhaka Tribune has learned that most of Samad’s close associates are from outside Rajshahi. They came from the nearby districts such as Sirajganj, Natore and Bogra and married local girls and settled in Buthpara.
This correspondent managed to contact Samad over phone. “The villagers are living very peacefully. They hardly have a problem. They always stand beside one another. When there is a problem, we solve it at meetings.”
He said, law enforcers are contacted only if the problem is critical.
Asked what critical means, Samad said: “Things get critical when university students lock into clashes with locals. But we are handling the situation very carefully these days. There has not been a clash for many days now.”
It was in fact through one of these “critical situations” in 1982, that Samad first gained prominence as a Shibir leader. He has never looked back since.
A clash with student wings of the ruling Awami League and some leftist parties left four Shibir activists dead on March 11, 1982. Chhatra League also lost an activist that day.
But Shibir took full advantage of those deaths and got the sympathy of Buthpara locals. Samad was at the forefront of Shibir action during that clash.
On March 17, 1992, Samad led Shibir men killed three cadres of Chhatra League and JaSad Chhatra League on the campus. They also cut the tendons of six other activists of those organisations in the typical method of Shibir execution.
On the same day, four Shibir activists were killed in a bomb blast in Buthpara. Reportedly, they were making bombs in a house and they exploded accidentally. But Samad exploited the situation to his favour again.
Just three months later that same year, Samad’s underlings killed JaSad leader Mukim in Buthpara. Police said it was Mukim’s “fault” that he had dared to enter Shibir’s den.
In 2001, Samad’s men torched Station Bazar near the university campus spreading a rumour that one of their men was killed. Police said their main aim was to establish control over the market.
A senior official of the Rajshahi Police told the Dhaka Tribune: “All these acts of violence, and many others, were all carried out with the same goal – establishing supremacy. It was after the arson attack on Station Bazar that common people started looking at Buthpara as a scary place.”
All these cases had been followed up with criminal cases but none have progressed to trial.
Samad’s close associate Hafizur, prime accused in the Mohammad Ali murder case filed a few days ago, drinks tea at a stall in Buthpara every morning, locals said. But police say he is absconding.
Iftekharul Alam, Rajshahi’s assistant police commissioner, told the Dhaka Tribune: “We have been following up all those cases. We also conduct regular raids in the area. But all the accused are absconding.”
When pointed out that some of the accused are seen moving about in the area regularly, Iftekhar asked this reporter to help with information.
Awami League supporter Hasan, who was attacked in Buthpara in October, filed a case with the Motihar police station accusing Shibir leader Sajjad and some others.
He alleged that Motihar police station Sub-Inspector Nurul Karim arrested Sajjad but later let him go for a Tk5,000-bribe.
When contacted, Nurul, currently on training as he claimed, told the Dhaka Tribune: “I do not remember anything about that case.”
On Saturday morning last week, this reporter met rickshaw puller Abdur Rashid. The 30-year old said he was originally from Dinajpur district and had been living in Buthpara for 18 years.
A few years ago, Rashid bought a piece of land in Buthpara for Tk90,000 and settled there, marrying a local girl.“It would be hard to find anyone who was born here. Most are outsiders like me who have settled here marrying local girls. Some are day labourers and rickshaw pullers like me while others are farmers and or grocers or class III university employees,” Rashid said.
Asked how he managed that kind of money for the land, he said the councillor got a loan from an NGO for him. “Our councillor Abdus Samad is a very nice man. He is our saviour. He arranges everything for us. Whenever we face any problem, we go to him and he solves it.”
He also said: “We hardly ever go to the police if there is a problem. Councillor Samad solves all our problems and everybody obeys him. Why would we spend money by going to the police or the courts?”
Further into the village, there was an old man named Shirajul Islam. The 65-year old was born in the village. He started talking only after this correspondent convinced him that he was a student doing research on the life of the villagers and not a journalist.
“There was no concrete building here before the 1980s. The buildings that you are seeing around were built after 1985. People from outside Rajshahi stood beside us at a time when we had nothing. The university authorities illegally acquired our lands at that time without paying a penny in compensation,” Shirajul said.
A former RU teacher, who has been living in the area for four and a half decades, said Shibir targeted this area because it was very close to the university and a stronghold here would really help them in carrying out their activities on the campus.
“Shibir first tried to get entry into the village in the late 1970s. But it was difficult for them because the left-leaning and progressive student bodies were strong on campus,” he said.
“Things started changing in 1980. Over the next 10 years, the progressive student groups weakened. That helped Shibir.”
Moreover, he went on, the government regimes of that period were friendly towards Jamaat and Shibit. “They started their domination here with the help of the administration. They first announced their strong presence through the killing of Chhatra League leader Mir Mostak Elahi in 1981 on the RU campus,” he said.
“But the biggest help that they got was when the university authorities acquired some land of the village in mid-1980s. That infuriated the villagers and Jamaat-Shibir took advantage. They gave them financial support and their men married girls from the poor families. Thus they built a strong bonding with the villagers,” the former RU teacher said.
