Biswajit Das Murder and the Start of Political Blame Games
Bangladesh has always been trifled with student politics. The victims of these student politics aren’t just students, though the last decade showed us even common people could be victims of student politics. Last decade had a huge number of BSL-related violence, and the ruling party Awami League tried to cover up these incidents as much as possible. One of the incidents they tried to cover up was the murder of Biswajit Das.
Context
An 18-party coalition led by BNP (the opposition back then) started an ‘oborodh’ on the 9th of December. Lawyers supporting this started a procession from Dhaka DSJ Court. When they arrived at Victoria Park, a bomb blast happened, and they started getting beaten up by BSL members of Jagannath University and Kabi Nazrul Sarkari College. Amid this chaos, while all of them started to run, an innocent tailor by the name of Biswajit Das started to find shelter somewhere, seeing the chaos. He decided to take shelter at a nearby dental clinic. BSL people managed to enter the clinic and started beating him up and even attacked him with an iron rod. Injured, he ran to another place where BSL found him again and started beating him up again. A group of 8–12 BSL members started attacking him with sharp weapons, and his entire body started streaming out blood. Bystanders tried to help him and take him to the hospital, but BSL members did not allow them. Biswajit found an open chance to escape but eventually fell down to the road. A rickshawala saw him and tried to take him to Mitford Hospital, but by then he was already dead.
Who was Biswajit Das?
Biswajit Das was just an ordinary tailor who happened to get caught amid the chaos that was happening around him. He wasn’t affiliated with any politics and used to work in his elder brother’s shop. According to the people around him, he was a straightforward living guy.
The Investigation and Culprits
The investigation and the cases around this case are what make it controversial. Since the attack was done by the student wing of the ruling party BAL at that time, the ruling party tried their best to drive away from this case as much as they could, but the publicity of this incident made it hard to achieve as the whole details of the murder and everything were captured live on television.
JNU reacted to the whole situation by kicking out five of the culprits from their university: Mahfuzur Rahman Nahid, Imdadul Haque, Nure Alam Limon, Rafiqul Islam Shakil, and Obaidul Quader Tahsin. These students were banned from the university.
The media covered this incident at the time, especially in Prothom Alo and the Daily Star and in television channels asking for justice for the victim, and it caused controversy among the masses as well. Later, it was found out from an investigation that JNU BSL leader Yunus had instructed Shakil, Mahfuzur, Saiful, Kibria, Kamrul, Shaon, Mir Mo Nure Alam Limon, Imdadul Haque, Sumon, Obaidul Quader, and Rajon to beat up Biswajitl.
The guy who started beating up Biswajit with an iron road was Mahfuzur Rahman, and this iron rod attack was what ended up killing Biswajit. The guy who beat Biswajit with chapati was Rafiqul Islam Shakil.
The court decided to start the trial proceedings in 2013. Among the 21 people caught by the investigation, 8 of them were killed by the death penalty, 13 of them were given life imprisonment, and everyone had to pay 20,000 BDT to the court. But among the culprits, only 8 of them were imprisoned; the rest 13 managed to escape.
Later on, another controversy happened as the judgment rendered that among 8 people, 2 people were given bail, 4 of the death penalty inmates were given life imprisonment, and 2 people had their death penalty stay on. And another 2 inmates among the 13 who were given life imprisonment were given freedom in 2017. These two were AHM KIbria and Golam Mostofa.
This case got even more tragic after the fact that the number of culprits was reduced from 21 to 17 and the lack of initiative by the authorities to catch the remaining 13 people.
Biswajit’s brother was deeply disappointed with the case and said he didn’t get proper justice. In 2022, after a long time, some of the escaped 13 were caught again.
Why Did This Happen?
Some questions were left to be answered. Why did Biswajit get so brutally attacked? Why were the punishments reduced and removed for a lot of the perpetrators? Why didn’t the government act quickly to ensure he gets proper justice? What were the rumors and alternate narratives at that time?
The police interrogation stated that Biswajit was attacked because the day before the JNU BSL committee made a decision that during oborodh if anyone supported the michil, they would be attacked. Biswajit happened to be caught among them.
Awami League tried to shift the blame onto Shibir as well at times. If not the party, their supporters tried to shift the blame on Shibir as it was 2013—a very useful time for spreading narratives.
One of the rumors was that one of the attackers was actually a shibir agent. Again, no evidence of this was so whatsoever found.
Another controversy was seen by the actions of the home minister at that time, Mohiuddin Ahmed, who stated that none of the people involved in the murder of Biswajit were BSL members but were long gone from BSL. This was quickly disproven because all of them were functioning top leaders of JNU BSL. Also, he gave another false claim that 8 people were already arrested for the crime, but then police hadn’t even arrested anyone; they just started interrogating people. Biswajit’s father also complained regarding the case proceedings. He also complained the postmortem wasn’t done correctly since everyone who saw his murder stated he had multiple places where he was attacked, but the postmortem stated they only found one place in his body where he was found to have been attacked with a knife. He alleged that this type of weak postmortem was done to protect the murderers.
A postmortem was redone by Sir Salimullah Medical, which found 3 more spots where he was attacked.
Possible Motive
Biswajit being attacked like this while there were active lawyers on the road who were not attacked raises a lot of questions. BSL did plan the night before to go to this protest with resistance, but why hurt a common man so much? This question still remains unanswered as to what agitated BSL so much that day—was it them being bullies and angry people just for fun? Or was it a planned attack so that they could create a narrative on their own so that they could show that BNP-led andolons could lead to violence? Maybe that would have been the narrative if the whole murder wasn’t captured on cameras. It would have been one of those other murders that could be blamed easily on the opposition.
Trial
Different lawyers have had different takes on what eventually happened with the trials. Some say punishments were harsh at first due to a mob mentality and were later changed to a more acceptable stance. Others say it was due to political pressures that the charges were changed.
The logic used for dropping charges falls into two categories:
*1. Capital punishment isn’t the right decision to go always.
- While they were the perpetrators, they were ordered by a higher power.*
The first logic falls apart due to its inconsistency—all of them were involved in the attacks. How could you assign who gets what? One gets death, another gets life imprisonment, and the other gets bail. It’s a joke.
Another thing that shows clear interference in the escape of some of the convicted criminals is the fact they were seen later on in various places roaming freely by observers but were never caught on time until very recently in 2022. It shows there was political pressure to put those in power.
Conclusion
The reason this murder even got people arrested and punished was because this was actually recorded along with the perpetrators. Even then, people evaded punishment due to political pressure. Similar murder happened to Toki as well, although that was more directly politically motivated. Due to not having the graphic evidence, maybe we will never know the full horror of the Toki murder and the true perpetrators except the one who gave the call. Same with hundreds of other murders in the last 15 years, which we don’t have any information about.
Sources:
- বিশ্বজিৎ হত্যা: মৃত্যুদণ্ড থেকে রেহাই ছয় ছাত্রলীগ নেতা-কর্মীর, হতাশ বিশ্বজিতের পরিবার | BBC Bangla
- বিশ্বজিৎ ও রাজনৈতিক দ্বৈতনীতি | bdnews24.com
- বিশ্বজিৎ হত্যা: যাবজ্জীবন সাজাপ্রাপ্ত পলাতক আসামি গ্রেপ্তার | bdnews24.com
- বিশ্বজিৎ হত্যা: ১৮ জনের নাম বললেন সাক্ষী | bdnews24.com
- HC verdict on Biswajit murder | The Daily Star
- Biswajit Murder: HC verdict on Aug 6 | The Daily Star
- বিশ্বজিৎ হত্যাকাণ্ড: মাত্র দু’জনের মৃত্যুদণ্ড বহাল | DW
Ayan Abdullah
Researcher