Police have recovered the body of Md. Kamruzzaman Molla (65), Vice President of the Gazipur branch of Shushashoner Jonno Nagorik (Sujan), with his hands and legs tied in Gazipur city. A murder case was filed on Thursday by the victim’s son, Kaushik Zaman.
According to police, the body was recovered late Wednesday night from the Purbo Dhirashram area under Sadar Metro Police Station in Gazipur Metropolitan City.
Kamruzzaman Molla was the son of Idris Ali from the Gazipura area of Ward No. 50 in the city. Besides serving as the vice president of Sujan’s Gazipur branch, he was also involved in contracting business.
Family members and police sources said that on Wednesday (March 4) at around 7:00 am, Kamruzzaman Molla left his house to inquire about a case at the Gazipur court. After finishing court proceedings, he left his lawyer’s chamber but did not return home.
When he did not return even late at night, family members began searching for him. Around 2:00 am, they were informed by police that his body had been recovered.
Police and local residents said that miscreants allegedly tied his hands and legs and strangled him to death before dumping the body beside a road in the Dhirashram area under Gazipur Sadar Metro Police Station.
Local residents spotted the body lying beside the road at night and informed the police. The police then recovered the body and sent it to the morgue of Shaheed Tajuddin Ahmad Medical College Hospital for autopsy.
The victim’s younger brother, Kabirul Islam, said, “As far as we know, he did not have any conflict with anyone. However, there might have been disputes related to business transactions.”
Officer-in-Charge (OC) of Gazipur Sadar Police Station, Aminul Islam, said that preliminary investigation suggests he might have been strangled to death due to previous enmity. The exact cause of death will be confirmed after receiving the autopsy report.
He added that the body has already been handed over to the family after the autopsy, and police are working to identify and arrest those involved in the murder.
s the clock hit midnight, the women held their flame torches aloft and marched into the Dhaka night. “The people have given their blood, now we want equality,” they shouted above the roar of the traffic.
For many in Bangladesh, the past few weeks have been a cause for jubilation. The first free and fair elections in 17 years have been promised for Thursday, after the toppling of the regime of Sheikh Hasina in a bloody student-led uprising in August 2024 in which more than 1,000 people died.
Opposition figures long persecuted and jailed are now running as candidates, freely holding rallies for the first time in years. The former prime minister is languishing in exile in Indiaand facing a death sentence for crimes against humanity in Bangladesh, and her Awami League party is banned from contesting the election.
Women marched in Dhaka at midnight
Yet for swathes of women in the country, including those who were at the forefront of the revolution, the hope of the election has become tinged with disappointment and fear, amid a resurgence of regressive Islamist politics that it is feared will impinge upon women’s rights and a dearth of female candidates in the running.
“This was meant to be an election representing change and reform. Instead, we are seeing women being systematically erased and their rights threatened,” said Sabiha Sharmin, 25, as she took part in the midnight march. “We worry this election will throw the country back 100 years.”
Among the most oppressed political movements of the Hasina era, when elections were rigged and opponents persecuted, was Jamaat e-Islami, an Islamist party that believes in bringing sharia law to Bangladesh. It was banned and its leaders jailed, disappeared or sentenced to death.
Since Hasina’s fall, Jamaat e-Islami has mobilised with unprecedented gusto, positioning itself as a rival to the veteran Bangladesh Nationalist party (BNP) that was previously expected to make a clean sweep of the elections.
Limited polling still suggests BNP will win the election but it appears as if Jamaat e-Islami will earn a historic share of the vote and be a significant force after the election. “Whether it’s as a sizeable opposition or a government in power, the future of Bangladesh’s politics looks like a heavily Islamist party will be at its centre,” said Thomas Kean, Crisis Group’s senior consultant on Bangladesh.
People board an overcrowded train in Dhaka to travel home to vote in the national election. Photograph: Fatima Tuj Johora/Reuters
Critics say the resurgence of conservative Islamist politics has already begun to seep into society. In rural areas, girls were prevented from playing football by religious leaders who termed it indecent, and women have reported mounting harassment if they do not cover their hair or dress modestly.
While Jamaat e-Islami has put forward a manifesto focusing on reform, women’s safety from harassment and clean politics, the party is not running a single female candidate. Rhetoric from the party’s leader, Shafiqur Rahman, has had a chilling effect.
In an incendiary interview with Al Jazeera, he said a woman could never lead the party as it was un-Islamic. A post on Rahman’s X account then compared women’s work to prostitution, before it went viral and was deleted with claims he had been hacked. Comments he made last year also resurfaced, denying the existence of marital rape and describing rape as “immoral women and men coming together outside marriage”.
Last year, the alliance of Islamist parties forced the government to reject proposals of a women’s commission on equality. “Equal rights would push women into competition with men in a way that disadvantages them,” said Mamnunul Haque, secretary general of the hardline Islamist party Khelafat Majlish, speaking at the time.
“These are the kinds of views and policies you hear in Iran and Afghanistan,” said Zayba Tahzeeb, 21, a physics student who attended the Dhaka midnight march. “Women’s sovereignty, our freedoms, our independence: all are at stake in this election.”
Taslima Akhter (fourth from right) of the Ganosamhati Andolon party at a campaign rally in Dhaka. Photograph: Munir Uz Zaman/AFP/Getty Images
Among the policies proposed by the party is reducing women’s working hours from eight hours to five, with the government subsidising the lost income, so women can spend more time at home. Women make up 44% of the country’s workforce, according to the International Labour Organization, the highest proportion in south Asia, and paid work is a right fiercely guarded by women across economic strata.
The sense of frustration grew after the National Citizen party (NCP), which was formed by the student leaders who toppled Hasina and positioned itself as the party of progress, announced in December it would join the Jamaat e-Islami alliance in the election. The party that had forged itself as a political alternative with women at the forefront is now fielding just two female candidates.
Tajnuva Jabeen, a doctor and founder member of NCP, was one of a wave of women who left after the Jamaat e-Islami alliance was announced – a decision made without consultation by a few select men at the top of the party.
“It was such a clear betrayal,” Jabeen said. “This was a historic opportunity to create a third political force, to represent the change that so many people died for in the July uprising. Instead, they failed the people and silenced the women who led this movement. I’m sorry to say, this election will not represent the spirit of the revolution.”
She emphasised the failures towards women in this election were not Jamaat e-Islami and NCP’s alone – less than 5% of the BNP’s candidates are women.
Bangladesh, which is 91% Muslim, has had a chequered history with secularism since its independence from Pakistan in 1971. Religion-based politics were outlawed on the country’s formation but dominant during military rule after 1975, before secularism was restored to the constitution in 2011.
Analysts emphasise that many now supporting Jamaat e-Islami are simply disenchanted with the political old guard. Since 1971, the country has swung between two parties, Awami League and the BNP, both of which have been accused of indulging in dynastic politics and rampant corruption.
Jamaat-e-Islami’s leader, Shafiqur Rahman, centre, and colleagues at an election rally in Dhaka. Photograph: Anupam Nath/AP
Jamaat e-Islami appears particularly popular among young, first-time voters, who make up 42% of the electorate and are hungry for change. The authoritarian nature of Hasina’s regime somewhat discredited secularism and made voters more open to Islamist politics this time around, say analysts.
One of the fresh faces of Jamaat e-Islami is Mir Ahmad Bin Quasem Arman, a barrister up for election in Dhaka. The son of an executed Jamaat e-Islami leader, he was abducted under the Hasina regime and spent eight years imprisoned and tortured in one of her notorious underground facilities. He emerged from his cell the day after Hasina was toppled, initially believing he was being dragged out to finally be executed.
“It was systematic torture for eight years, worse than death,” he said, his voice breaking. “It felt like I was buried alive. But God gave me a second life. I am here to represent all those who were taken to the dark cells and never came out.”
Pushing a message of reform and anti-corruption, he insisted the fears of women towards his party were unfounded and part of a political smear campaign.
“When you talk to urban elites, their talking points are whether women can be in the top position of the government, whether women can wear whatever they want,” Arman said. “These are – I’m sorry to use the word – feminist demands. The ground level is very different. The primary requirement of the women on the ground, the working class, is safety and that’s our prime concern.
“Maybe in the near future you will see women running on our ticket too,” he added.
Female supporters of Jamaat e-Islami take part in a march in Dhaka
In an attempt to demonstrate the party’s commitment to women, thousands of female Jamaat e-Islami supporters took to the streets of Arman’s constituency in Dhaka to deny that the party would restrict their freedoms.
“The policies they are proposing will improve women’s lives and their safety,” said Sirajim Munira, 27. “I think it will be good for the country to bring in Islamic law because it will make us honest and corruption-free.”
Ainum Nahar, 58, said Jamaat’s grassroots were driven by women. “Jamaat empowers us,” she said. Yet she agreed that women should never head the party. “As an Islamic party, it is prohibited for women to be leaders,” Nahar said. “But we will stand behind, to inspire them, to encourage them and to move the country forward.”
The British Parliamentarian also called for a statement from the British Foreign Secretary outlining what action the UK Government will take to safeguard minorities across Bangladesh and ensure free, fair, and inclusive elections.
After years of repression, Bangladesh’s Islamist groups are mobilising ahead of February 12 elections, determined to gain a foothold in government as they sense their biggest opportunity in decades.
The South Asian nation – home to 170 million people, the vast majority Sunni Muslims – is preparing for its first polls since the mass uprising that toppled the autocratic government of Sheikh Hasina in 2024.
At the centre of this formidable push is the Jamaat-e-Islami, the country’s largest and best-organised Islamist party.
Ideologically aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood, they are seeking a return to formal politics after years of bans and crackdowns.They have papered over divisions with several other Islamist groups for the election and put forward only male candidates.
The back of the victim's head had a deep wound of about two and a half inches, and excessive bleeding was suspected to have caused the death. He collapsed on the ground, bleeding heavily, while the attackers fled the scene. Locals rushed to the spot after hearing his screams.
“The man who was lynched, hung from a tree, and burned to death in Bhaluka, Mymensingh on allegations of religious blasphemy was named Dipu Chandra Das. He was a garment worker.
His father is physically disabled. It can be said that he was paralyzed due to some accident. Leaning on others’ shoulders, he stood there crying. His son was the family’s sole breadwinner. He is survived by a one-year-old child.
The incident took place on Thursday night in front of Section-3 of Pineo BD Limited factory in Jamirdia Dubalia Para of Habirbari Union under Bhaluka Upazila.
The deceased, Dipu Chandra Das, was the son of Rabi Chandra Das from Tarakanda Upazila of Mymensingh and was a worker at that factory.
According to the family, since he had passed a BA degree, he performed supervisory duties. They believe that due to some argument at the garment factory, certain people brought accusations of religious blasphemy against him. In front of his family members, he was stripped naked, beaten, hung from a tree, and burned to death.
How such monstrosity can become an ordinary occurrence in Bangladesh—this is clearly barbarism. The core objective is to drag this country back into a dark age.”
