A year in jail over mistaken identity: bribe allegation surfaces as inquiry reveals the mix-up
Fresh details have emerged in the case of a man kept in jail for almost a year after police arrested the wrong person because of a similarity of names. The inquiry report says the man who was arrested and the convicted accused are two completely different people — yet confusion arose because their names, their fathers' names and their villages' names were similar.
Mohammad Almas, an electrician by profession, is held in the central jail at Keraniganj in Dhaka. The man sentenced to 10 years in an arms case from two decades ago — a different man whose name differs by a single letter — is now in Canada, according to those connected with the investigation.
At a hearing of the writ on Sunday (8 November), the court took the inquiry report into account and ordered the swift release of Almas, who has been in jail for a year without committing any crime. But his wife, Bonna Akter, said that as of Sunday night he had still not been released from jail.
Bonna Akter has alleged that after last year's arrest, police demanded 20,000 taka from the family to release her husband. She says the family paid the money, but instead of releasing him, police sent him to jail through the court. She also said the police officer later returned the money to the family.
The police officer against whom the allegation has been made, Sub-Inspector Zubaidul Haq, has denied it. He claimed he arrested Almas because of an address error, and that he neither demanded nor took any money from the family.
The inquiry report says the episode began in 2002. On the afternoon of 10 April that year, police arrested the other Almas — the man later convicted — and Nazmul Alam Mamun from Haji Road in Mirpur, Dhaka. Police filed an arms case at Mirpur police station, and the case statement said a revolver had been found tucked at that Almas's waist.
A year after the arrest, on 20 April 2003, the High Court granted that Almas bail. A year after that, in June 2004, the Dhaka Metropolitan Special Tribunal sentenced him to 10 years in prison. The jailed electrician's lawyer, Md. Tanvir Ahmed, said the trial of the case was completed while the real accused was absconding on bail from the High Court.
About 11 years after the verdict, in 2015, electrician Mohammad Almas was detained from Dohar in Dhaka. His wife Bonna Akter said that time, with the intervention of local representatives, police realised that this Almas was not the man they were looking for — and released him. After the Union Parishad chairman confirmed in writing in 2015, police were satisfied that this Almas was not the person convicted in that arms case.
Ten years after that incident, last year Almas was detained again from his home in Dohar. According to the inquiry report, on the afternoon of 4 November 2025, SI Zubaidul Haq, in charge of the Char Mohammadpur police outpost in Dohar upazila, arrested him from Sundaripara village.
Bonna Akter said that afternoon, two policemen in plain clothes came to the house, called Almas out on the pretext of needing an electrician, and handcuffed him as soon as he stepped outside. They said there was a case and a warrant against him. She went to the outpost with the member and the chairman, but police did not listen to them.
In her words, the local representatives have changed since the uprising of August 2024. The new representatives also went to the police station and mentioned the 2015 incident, but police did not heed them. The next day, 5 November, police sent him to jail through the court.
While in jail, Almas filed a writ in court. The writ was heard in September this year. The court issued a rule asking why the arrest and detention of Almas in place of the real accused should not be declared illegal, and why he should not be ordered compensation. At the same time, the Chief Judicial Magistrate was directed to have the identities of the two men investigated and to submit a report within 45 days. On the court's order, Senior Judicial Magistrate Mahfuzur Rahman conducted the inquiry under the supervision of Dhaka's Chief Judicial Magistrate, and the report was submitted to the court on 1 November.
The report says the names of the two men and parts of their fathers' names match. There were also similarities in the names of their villages and an error in the address written in the records of the 2002 case. The convicted Almas's ancestral village is Purba Dhoair in Nayabari union of Dohar upazila in Dhaka. The arrested Almas's family, by contrast, comes from Bahra, under the Dakshin Bahra post office in the same upazila. They lived there until 2007, when river erosion forced the family to move to Sundaripara that year.
The inquiry committee could not trace the police officers who had made the arrests in that case 22 years ago. The committee also spoke to relatives of the Almas arrested with arms in Mirpur. Citing their information, the report says the real accused is now in Canada.
Assistant Attorney General Mohiuddin Md. Hanif, the state lawyer, said the inquiry report shows this to be, on the face of it, a case of mistaken identity. But the writ petitioner's lawyer, Tanvir Ahmed, said an innocent man has been in jail for more than a year because of the mistakes of the magistrate and the police of that time — and the police bear the greater share of the blame. Deputy Attorney General Shihab Uddin Khan, who took part in Sunday's hearing, said no one can evade responsibility for this incident. The police bear responsibility, as do the other parties concerned.
SI Zubaidul Haq, meanwhile, said he sent Almas to court because he found a match with the warrant in the case, and that whatever he did, he did on the basis of the warrant. In his words, there was no fault on his part. The report, however, notes that several details — the names, the fathers' names and the grandfathers' names — differ between the victim Almas and the Almas arrested in 2002. Bangladesh has seen several such incidents before, in which innocent people were arrested and jailed because of a similarity of names.
