CID taught Joj Miah grenade lessons
Joj Miah
An interview with The Daily Star discloses how law enforcers made a major culprit in Aug 21 attack out of a vendor
A top official of the CID taught Joj Miah how to handle a grenade during his detention.
The CID official gave him a crash course on the use of Arges grenades with detailed photographs and schematics to make him appear a credible culprit of the August 21, 2004, attack on an Awami League rally.
The CID had arrested Joj Miah and branded him a key player of the attack but investigation later on proved he was nothing but a petty criminal whom rouge policemen used to divert the probe.
Joj Miah, who the BNP still claims is the real culprit behind the attack, narrated to The Daily Star yesterday how the Criminal Investigation Department persuaded him to pose as a key player of the attack.
Recalling his experience in detention, Joj said the CID officials made him memorise a fabricated plot of the attack and went to great lengths to make sure he sticks to that story until the trials end.
Top CID officials promised to keep him live and make him the approver [royal witness] instead of an accused in the case. They also promised to "take care of him" and his poor family. He was promised that he would be released and sent abroad, after the end of the trial.
Joj was arrested in Noakhali on June 10, 2005 and confessed on June 26 that he was "involved" in the attack. He was cleared of the charges during the caretaker regime in 2008 and released in March 2009.
Two days before he was arrested in his Birkat village, Jamal Member of his village warned him about a smuggling complaint lodged against him with the local police.
"Jamal told me that Kabir Daroga [sub-inspector] asked him to take me to the Shyambagh Police Station," said Joj, adding that Jamal advised him to bribe the police Tk 2,000 to bypass arrest.
Joj claimed that he was not involved in any criminal activity but he agreed to pay the money, believing it was the best he could do. Jamal took the money to the police station.
Later in the day, Moksed, a chowkidar or village watchman, told Joj that Sub-Inspector Kabir had asked him to take him to the police station.
Kabir handcuffed Joj after he went to his uncle's shop in the village with Moksed. The policeman drove Joj to the police station on his motorcycle.
When Joj asked Kabir why he was being arrested, he said: "You'll get to know everything at the police station."
Later Jamal and Joj's family members went to the police station and they were informed that there was a case against him in Dhaka.
"They said there was a complaint filed against me in Dhaka and people from Dhaka were coming to take me," Joj continued. "But they could not say anything else."
After he was locked up in the police station, a plainclothes policeman showed up a few hours later. He heard him say, "I'm SP Rashid. Where is Joj?"
Rashid (Assistant Superintendent of Police Abdur Rashid) then asked Kabir to bring Joj out and asked all local police officers to leave the station.
Joj saw one of the companions of Rashid get two new gamchha [towels] out of a pack. He was blindfolded with one and his hands -- already in cuffs -- were tied with the other.
"I was sitting on the floor. Rashid uttered some names: Ledu Miah, Subrata, Mollah Masud, Jisan, Swapan and Mukul. He asked me whether I recognised any of them."
Joj said no.
"SP Rashid told me that 'you know them, you know their names, and now you are denying it. Police know everything and can do everything'," Joj said.
"If you know everything why are you asking me then?" Joj asked the police officer.
Somebody in the room replied with a kick on his back, making him roll over on the floor. "They hit me with a stick on the soles of my feet and on my bottom."
After Joj screamed out in pain when the stick hit his right hand, Rashid asked his companions to stop beating. Rashid told them that they would beat Joj up later.
"Sir I think a bone in my right hand is broken," Joj had said.
"It doesn't matter if your bone is broken. We are going to kill you after some time anyway," Joj quoted Rashid as saying.
Joj claimed that Rashid told him that they were going to take him away in a car and kill him.
"What is my crime?" Joj asked. "SP Rashid said they would let me know before they kill me."
Joj told Rashid that there was no police case against him. And if there was any case, they should send Joj to court. Rashid said: "There are no cases against you. Then again, there is no lack of cases against you. If we wish, we can change good to bad, and bad to good."
"You'll be alive if you do as we say. And you'll die if you don't," Rashid said.
Joj gave in to the CID official's pressure.
"You have to admit that you belong to the group of people whose names we mentioned earlier. And you were involved in the attack with them on Bangabandhu Avenue on August 21, 2004," Joj quoted Rashid as saying.
Joj tried to convince the officials that he was in his village on the day of the attack and there were plenty of alibis.
"But SP Rashid told me that they don't need to crosscheck my alibis, and asked me whether I was ready to follow their instructions," Joj said.
At the time, the CID official told Joj that he would not be accused in the case, but would have to give a confessional statement and become an approver of the case.
Joj said he was left with no other option, but to accept the offer. Blindfolded for the entire ride, he was driven to Dhaka.
When the blindfold was taken off, Joj found himself sitting on the floor of what appeared to be the office of Rashid. Later, Rashid took Joj to the office of a "high official".
"Sir, I've brought Joj Miah. He'll do as you say," Joj heard Rashid saying to the "high official".
The official asked Rashid to leave.
The high official introduced himself as Ruhul Amin (Special Superintendent of Police Ruhul Amin) and asked Joj about his family and sources of income. "He told me not to worry about my family and that they'll run my family," Joj said.
Ruhul went on to assure Joj that he would not be accused in the case, but will be presented only as an approver.
When he was arrested, Joj was working as a street vendor of fruits in Dhaka. He also traded postcards and movie posters. Joj used to earn around Tk 5,000 a month, most of which was sent to his village home for his mother and younger siblings. Joj, now 30, is trying to make ends meet as a driver in Dhaka.
A STORY TO BE TOLD AND RETOLD
Joj was shown a video of the grenade attack and photographs of around 15 terrorists and criminals.
"Remember these well so that you can identify them when senior officers ask you about them," Ruhul told Joj, adding: "Tell them that there were many others who carried out the attack and you'd recognise them if you saw them."
Ruhul then briefed Joj on a story about the planning of the attack and how it was implemented. Joj was asked to tell the story in his confessional statement.
"He asked me to say I held a meeting with Masud, Mukul and others on August 20 at the home of Mokhles, who was an Awami League ward commission of Moghbazar," said Joj.
"And that we carried 10 grenades to Bangabandhu Avenue in sweetmeat packs. A few among us hurled the grenades. And that I was supposed to hurl one myself, but I didn't do it; I left the grenade on the spot and ran away."
Ruhul showed a detailed schematic of an Arges grenade. He familiarised Joj with the pin, the handle and other parts of the grenade and showed him how the grenade can be detonated with the pin taken off.
Joj was then asked to narrate the story as instructed, and Ruhul recorded it on video.
The CID official told Joj that he would lose his life if he denied in court the statement he just gave.
"We would implicate you in other cases, and we will clear you from those cases later," Ruhul told Joj.
The CID later took Joj on remand. He was kept in the offices of Ruhul Amin and Rashid throughout the two-week remand period. Other CID officials on duty were not allowed to interact with him.
Joj spent the time trying to memorise the story he was supposed to tell senior officials.
"After completion of the remand period, CID officials including Rashid and Munshi Atiqur [Assistant Superintendent of Police Munshi Atiqur Rahman] took me before the magistrate for recording my confessional statement. Rashid gave my written statement to the magistrate," said Joj.
Although the magistrate wrote the statement from another copy, he asked Joj to tell his story and recorded it on tape.
After the recording was done, Joj, the magistrate and the CID officials ate chicken biriyani at the magistrate's office.
The magistrate then asked Joj to file a petition with the court to become an approver. But if he denied the statement he just made, he would ultimately be executed. The magistrate also instructed Joj not to sign any paper for power of attorney.
Joj was sent to Dhaka Central Jail straight from the magistrate's office. Rashid, the CID official, provided Joj with clothes, bread, bananas, oil and soaps. Rashid assured him that the CID officials would stay in touch with him.
The next day, Joj was sent to Kashimpur prison, where he served the remainder of his time in detention.
CID officials gave his family a monthly allowance of Tk 2,500 and provided Joj with cash, clothes and other necessities in prison, but there were no official records, he said.
During his four years' stay in jail, the prison authorities sent a number of documents to Joj regarding power of attorney. Even when the prison superintendent advised him to sign the document, he refused to do so because he promised to the CID officials.
His mother came to visit him once with two CID officials. She visited Dhaka every month to collect the monthly allowance of Tk 2,500 from Ruhul Amin.
After the caretaker government came to power in 2007, the then CID investigator Munshi Atiqur Rahman came to visit Joj along with the then additional director general of Rapid Action Battalion Gulzar Uddin Ahmed.
Gulzar asked for a direct answer from Joj about his reported involvement in the August 21 attack. This was the first time since he was arrested when Joj admitted that he was not involved in the attack and he was forced to give the confessional statement.
He told Gulzar that Munshi Atiqur Rahman knew about it.
In response, Atiqur told Gulzar that he was not involved in this but he knew about the matter. He said this was why he came along with Gulzar to see Joj.
After Gulzar's visit, another CID official Fazlul Kabir visited Joj in Kashimpur. Joj also told Kabir that he was forced to become a part of the case.
Joj was finally cleared off the charges in 2008 and released from prison in March 2009.
The CID stopped giving the monthly allowance to Joj's family about a month before Gulzar's visit in 2007.
As a result, his family was forced to borrow and lost their only piece of land in Noakhali. The family is now in Narayanganj.
Joj yesterday demanded rehabilitation and justice from the government. "As a citizen of the country, I had a permanent address … a home."
"Now I'm left with nothing."
http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=200084__._,_.___
