Plaintiff himself trapped by false July case in Rajshahi, police recommend discharging all accused
A case filed after the July uprising alleged that a home had been attacked, vandalised and looted, and that bombs had been exploded. Police investigated and found none of it. Not a single resident living near the plaintiff's home knows of any such explosion or looting either.
Having filed such a case, Shahjahan Ali — a resident of Sultanabad mahalla under Boalia police station in Rajshahi city and a Sramik Dal leader — is now himself facing a case.
Describing the case as false and motivated, the police investigating officer has recently submitted a final report to the court recommending that all the accused be discharged. Legal action against the plaintiff for filing a false case has also been recommended, and the court is learnt to have issued a summons for the plaintiff to appear accordingly.
Sramik Dal leader Shahjahan Ali filed the case at Boalia Model police station on 19 August 2024. It named 26 people from the banned Awami League and its associate organisations, along with more than a hundred unidentified people, as accused.
The accused included metropolitan Swechchhasebak League president and former Rajshahi City Corporation (RCC) ward 13 councillor Abdul Momin, city Jubo League general secretary Taurid Al Masud Roni, former city Jubo League president Ramzan Ali and city Sramik League general secretary Akhtar Hossain, among others.
The case statement alleged that, out of vindictiveness over his active participation in the July movement, the accused attacked Shahjahan's home, vandalising and looting it and exploding bombs, causing damage of about Tk 10 lakh.
As it was a case centred on the July movement, the Rajshahi Metropolitan Police (RMP), considering its importance, assigned the investigation to the metropolitan Detective Branch (DB). After passing through several investigating officers, the case was finally investigated by DB Sub-Inspector (SI) Shah Ali Mia.
The investigation was supervised by four senior police officers, including former RMP additional commissioner Nazmul Hossain, who holds DIG rank. They also visited the scene several times.
The final report submitted after the investigation said that none of the neighbours questioned said any attack, vandalism, looting or bomb explosion had taken place at the plaintiff's home on the day and at the time in question. And when the plaintiff was asked to produce eyewitnesses to the incident, he could not do so either. The report recommended legal action against the plaintiff under section 211 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.
The case's last investigating officer, SI Shah Ali Mia, said a final report had been submitted to the court recommending the discharge of all the accused, and that action against the plaintiff under the rules for filing a false case had also been recommended.
The plaintiff, Shahjahan Ali, did not respond despite being called on his mobile phone several times for his comment on the matter.
