Brush with Bangla Bhai

It seemed like a long shot when I got on that overnight bus to Rajshahi in the first week of May 2004. And the purpose of my trip?

It was to fashion an audience with the enigmatic leader of Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh (JMJB) who waged a war against left-leaning extremism.

Hardly seen but mostly talked about, Bangla Bhai, as he dubbed himself, captured the imagination of the nation in the earlier part of last decade with reports of his vigilantism in the northwestern part of Bangladesh.

I had no lead or interceder to Bangla Bhai, but at the back of my mind, I knew I would get lucky if I used my wits.

"He had gone insane. Please don't try to meet him."

Well-meaning counsel such as this greeted me right off the bat at Rajshahi, the epicentre of Siddique ul-Islam, aka Bangla Bhai's insurgency.

I was told that Bangla Bhai's two aides were recently killed, an incident that has left him extremely paranoid.

"He is furiously searching for his unknown emerging enemies. He won't give an appointment to any stranger at this moment."

And even if I manage to engineer a session, I was advised not to go over to his den.

"He might consider you his enemy and won't hesitate to kill you. Don't put your life at risk. Better you leave Rajshahi immediately and go back to Dhaka to avoid any possible danger."

The more I was cautioned, the more determined I became to meet this elusive, ferocious man. But, I just could not get a breakthrough.

While asking around, I learnt that Bangla Bhai was not originally from Rajshahi; he hailed from a village in Bogra, another district in the northern region more than 100 kilometres away. 

I also found some names who had old and trusted relations with Bangla Bhai. 

Some of them were of journalists, and as luck would have it, I knew one of them. His name was Hasibur Rahman Bilu and he was a senior journalist based in Bogra town. 

I called up Bilu and sought his help in getting an appointment with Bangla Bhai. But the response I got from him was not the most encouraging.

Seeing how desperate I was about meeting the man, who by now seemed like a myth to me, Bilu finally agreed to give Bangla Bhai a call.

He also advised me to leave Rajshahi without delay and move to Bogra. I followed his suggestion and stationed myself in Bogra, which also enriched my investigation as Bangla Bhai was born and bred there.

By then, I had managed Bangla Bhai's mobile number, but I always found it switched off. Bilu though had no trouble reaching him over the phone as Bangla Bhai knew him and trusted him.

Bilu told me that Bangla Bhai was suspicious of my motive for meeting him. 

He enquired whether I was a secret agent of his foes and was hatching a plan to attack him.

Bilu assured him that I was just a journalist set on writing about him and that my reporting would not be truthful without speaking with him.

The Islamist militant leader, who was surprisingly enjoying an unprecedented free rein for his nerve-racking criminal activities, then asked Bilu if I would be writing for or against him.

I told Bilu to inform Bangla Bhai that I wanted to write about his activities, his goals and his achievements. And without speaking with him, my report would not have the same effect.

Bilu conveyed the message to Bangla Bhai.

After lots of back-and-forths, Bangla Bhai finally agreed to speak with me over the phone. But I was not too keen.

I told Bilu that I had a lot to ask Bangla Bhai about his "heroic activities", so the phone call would go on forever.

This approach paid off: to my utter delight, I got an appointment with Bangla Bhai the following morning. 

But it came with certain conditions: we had to meet at his given time, we could not bring a stranger with us, we had to keep our meeting time and place a secret and he would be quoted ad verbatim.

I readily went along with all of Bangla Bhai's demands.

Anticipating risks, Bilu asked a few of his friends who were known to Bangla Bhai to take us to the site on their motorcycles. Bilu had looped in Bangla Bhai on this travel arrangement, which he gave his nod to.

We reached the venue before 10 am the following morning and found no one there. Puzzled, Bilu called Bangla Bhai, who then gave us another address. Just as we were about to reach the second venue, Bangla Bhai again changed his mind about meeting us there. This happened three more times and I was starting to wonder if he was just messing with us.

One of Bilu's friends who was accompanying us recognised the sixth address Bangla Bhai gave us: it was his most secured den in an extremely remote village area. That's when I started to believe that I will finally get to meet the man.

We travelled for miles on a deserted snaking road flanked by paddy fields. As we were nearing the address, we realised we were being tailed off by a few other motorcycles.

Friends suspected rightly that those were Bangla Bhai's men and they were escorting us to his whereabouts, which was at the office of the Kachari Koalipara union parishad chairman in Bagmara upazila in Rajshahi. 

Suddenly, a few motorbikes overtook us and took a position in front of us. They waved at us to follow them. After a while, they stopped at a crowded fuel station and instructed us to go to a waiting sports utility vehicle to meet "Huzur". The Huzur was Bangla Bhai. 

As the vehicle's window glass was lowered we saw Bangla Bhai sitting in the front passenger seat, clad in kurta-pyjama with an arresting green headgear perched on top of his head.

He only told us to follow his jeep, which was escorted by dozens of motorcycles. 

Bangla Bhai got off the jeep in front of the union parishad premises. 

He then proceeded to show us a partially burnt Quran and crossly ordered me to write about the anti-Islamic people who were burning the holy book. This felt rather staged.

We then went inside the union parishad office and sat in the chamber of the chairman. 

Flanked by two of his men, Bangla Bhai took the chairman's seat. The official portrait of the then-Prime Minister Khaleda Zia watched over the three men.

I asked if we could take a photo but Bangla Bhai shot down my request, saying it was anti-Islamic. 

But I did not give up hope. 

"You are a hero known even abroad. No one would believe that an ordinary journalist like me has taken your interview without any photographic evidence," I said expectantly.

This worked like a charm. 

After getting our photos, we then dived into the interview. 

Indeed, I had so many things to ask him that I did not realise that I had overextended our appointment. Out of the blue, someone grabbed me by my shirt collar, as if he was trying to pull me out of my seat.

I knew this was our cue to bolt off and we zoomed off on our motorcycles.

We were a kilometre away from our meeting spot when Bilu's mobile rang. It was Bangla Bhai; he asked us to return as he had something urgent to tell us. For 15-20 minutes Bilu tried to finagle his way out of this. By then, we were some way off from the union parishad office.

When Bangla Bhai realised that we were not coming back, he asked Bilu whether the photos we had taken had the PM's official portrait in the frame. 

Bangla Bhai had summoned us back as he wanted to go through our photos and delete the offending photos. Bilu somehow managed to wriggle us out of it, too.

In fact, one of the photos did have the PM's official portrait in the background. It went on to become the first public evidence that Bangla Bhai's reign of terror had the government's blessings. 

After my reports were published, the then BNP-Jamaat alliance government tried its best to discredit my reporting.

They kept insisting that Bangla Bhai was "not real"; he was "a fictitious character" and a "creation of the media".

But my photos were evidence enough.

About 15 months after our extraordinary meeting, on 17 August 2005, about 500 bombs went off at 300 locations within a half-hour period starting from 11:30 am in 63 out of the 64 districts of Bangladesh.

And Bangla Bhai's militant outfit JMB claimed responsibility for this most brazen act of terror. The explosions claimed three lives and injured about a hundred.

And this was not the last of Bangla Bhai's terrorist acts. 

Three months later, his men tossed a bomb at a vehicle in the town of Jhalalkati, 120 km (75 miles) south of the capital. 

The vehicle was carrying two judges and both of them were killed. This act took him to the gallows.