The warrants and court orders were false; Azizur's ordeal was real
“I had been imprisoned wrongfully for around a month just due to the sheer negligence of prison authorities. In modern countries, the state compensates its citizens even if they are wrongfully incarcerated for a single day. But who will return 30 days from my life? What I had endured is a crime. I want justice,” Azizur said.
Azizur Rahman, 40, a Savar resident, was having tea with an acquaintance in the area's Firingi Bazaar on 25 August evening, a Friday.
After some time, he was approached by a police official from the Tannery Bazar Police Outpost, who showed Azizur that he had a complaint filed against him over a land dispute-related case.
Azizur was then taken to the police outpost. The plaintiff, one Golam Mostafa, was also summoned to the outpost.
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Mostafa, however, denied filing any complaint, according to Azizur.
But as the complaint was filed, Azizur was kept in the lockup and sent to Keraniganj Central Jail the next day.
On 29 August, he was produced before court, which then granted him bail.
"If the jail authorities checked the monogram properly, they would learn about the inconsistencies between the fakes and the original. And Azizur Rhaman wouldn't have been incarcerated for around one month"
This is when Azizur's real troubles began.
As soon as he stepped outside the next day to greet his family members, prison authorities informed him that there were four more arrest and conviction warrants pending against him.
Azizur, alongside his family members, was shocked.
These arrest warrants had been issued by different courts in Chattogram, Madaripur, Jamalpur and Dhaka, places Azizur didn't even have a relationship with.
Importantly, each had been issued a few days earlier.
Unbeknownst to Azizur at the time, each of these were fakes.
513km, 17 days
Azizur was kept in Keraniganj from 30 August till 4 September. He told the jailers that he was innocent and they instructed him to check whether the case was registered online.
Following requests from Azizur's family, the prison authorities had checked the court records online, but they found no trace.
As the warrant was issued, however, law enforcement officials told him they had no option but to produce him before the relevant courts.
This is when his journey from court to court began, spanning over 500 kilometres.
On 4 September, flanked by two sub-inspectors, he was taken to Jatrabari to board a bus to Chattogram.
According to Azizur, he was taken to Jatrabari in handcuffs and fetters, despite his charge being of land-grabbing.
He reached the Chattogram prison in the evening and was produced before the Chattogram Senior Judicial Magistrate Court nine days later.
After going through the documents and checking the case register, the court declared that the warrant was forged.
Although his innocence was proven, Azizur still had three more warrants against him, issued in Dhaka, Madaripur and Jamalpur.
Azizur was then taken to the Dhaka court, which also determined that the warrant was forged. A week later, he was taken to Madaripur. There, the court on 21 September also found the document to be forged.
After checking with relevant authorities in Jamalpur, yet another forgery was discovered. The same day, Azizur was finally released, his dilemma having to come to a close.
But what had happened, exactly? Who had carried out the forgery?
Joining the dots
On 23 November, Azizur filed a case with the Dhaka Chief Judicial Magistrate Court seeking justice over his 30-day wrongful incarceration. He accused some prison officials and some persons with whom he had an ongoing dispute over land demarcation.
The Police Bureau of Investigation (PBI) then took the matters into their hands.
The first thing PBI began looking for someone who would benefit from Azizur's incarceration.
"At first, we tried to find out who wanted to keep him [Azizur] in prison and who benefited from it. Those who had accused Azizur in the fake cases were his neighbours with whom he had some land-related dispute," PBI Organized Crime (South) Additional Superintendent of Police Sarwar Jahan told TBS.
Four more names kept cropping up – Abu Siddiq, Golam Mostafa, Md Faruq and Rafiqul Islam.
The PBI, however, initially found no concrete evidence against them.
They continued to dig. They turned their attention to the forged court documents and asked all post offices, from where those came from, to find out who the sender was.
This turned out to be a dead end as all the letters came without the sender's name or address.
"Obtaining CCTV footage from those post offices was nearly impossible. We were searching for a needle inside the haystack," Jahan said.
It was time to turn to raw data.
"At one point, with a telecom operator's data, we analysed that one person, Md Rafiqul Islam, brother-in-law of Abu Siddiq, had travelled to Chattogram post office right before the warrant was sent out."
Rafiqul had never been to the district before, according to Sarwar.
Rafiqul was then quizzed by police and he finally admitted to sending the documents.
"When they sensed that Azizur would get bail within a few days, they made the plan. Rafiqul Islam travelled alone to all three districts."
Last week on Wednesday, the PBI submitted their investigation report to a Dhaka court mentioning the wrongful imprisonment.
Three jail officials were also mentioned as they didn't do the needful to verify the fake arrest and conviction warrants.
The jail officials offence was a dereliction of duty and gross professional negligence.
The report said Shuvash Kumar Ghosh, senior jail superintendent (acting), Md Hasan Ali, deputy jailor (bail and admission section in charge) and Md Habibur Rahman Habib, head warder of Dhaka Central Jail, did not perform their duties professionally.
The PBI, however, didn't recommend any punishment or steps against the prison officials.
An official involved in the investigation told TBS that the court may decide the steps against the prison officials and those involved in the forgery.
"If the jail authorities checked the monogram properly, they would learn about the inconsistencies between the fakes and the original. And Azizur Rhaman wouldn't have been incarcerated for around one month," said Sarwar Jahan, investigation officer of the case.
Another day, another fight
For Azizur Rahman, this hasn't been an ordeal that can just be swept under the rug.
"I had been imprisoned wrongfully for around a month just due to the sheer negligence of prison authorities. In modern countries, the state compensates its citizens even if they are wrongfully incarcerated for a single day. But who will return 30 days from my life? What I had endured is a crime. I want justice," Azizur said.
Jyotirmoy Barua, a human rights defender and Supreme Court lawyer, termed the incident a case of gross human rights violation.
"The aggrieved person can seek compensation through a civil trial court or the High Court under Section 132 of the Constitution. But only a handful of victims who file such a case get a remedy or compensation. It's very rare," he said.
Setting a precedent, in response to a writ petition filed in 2019, a High Court bench ordered the inspector general of prison and a district superintendent of a jail to ascertain the genuineness of arrest warrants.
Our Savar correspondent Noman Mahmud contributed to the report.
