Could you guess where war criminal Abdul Alim hid when freedom fighters raided his house in Joypurhat during the Liberation War?

It was in the unlikeliest of places.

For the freedom fighters of Bogra and Joypurhat, the war crimes verdict against Alim was something they had long waited for, though the sentence was not quite to their satisfaction.

One of them is Ataur Rahman Golap, a freedom fighter of Sector-7, who led a seven-member guerrilla group that raided the house of Abdul Alim on April 20, 1971.

The 64-year-old recalled how they

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found Alim and how a group of Muslim Leaguers later snatched the collaborator from them.

It was a very intriguing story, Ataur said while talking to The Daily Star yesterday evening.

"Instructed by the commander of Sector-7, Captain Anwar, who later became a major general and chief of Bangladesh Rifles, we seven civilian fighters raided the house of Maulana Abbas Ali and Abdul Alim in April 1971."

Ataur, his younger brother Aminul Haque Dulal, his nephew Don, Akbar alias Pagla Akbar, Moti and Ahsanul Haque Minu took part in that action. Except for Ahsanul Haque Minu, all

the other comrades are dead, he said.

When the team of freedom fighters reached Alim's house, they found none but his father, who said he had no idea where his son was.

"We looked for him. But there was no sign of him," he said.

"Just before going back, Minu or Moti, who I cannot remember, went to use the toilet at the corner of their home yard.

"And he shouted out; we all ran towards to the toilet,” he added.

It was not like today's toilet Human faeces used to collect in a big container which needed to be cleaned up by a sweeper once every few days.

Somebody was hiding in the container holding what

looked like a pistol.

"And it was Alim. Poking with a bayonet we told him to come out and when he came out we found he was not holding any pistol but his spectacles,” said Ataur.

"As we directed his father to clean him up so that we could quiz him, we saw a group of locals coming to us chanting Joy Bangla slogans."

They were actually local Muslim Leaguers pretending to be pro-liberation people. "The mob attacked us and snatched Alim from us."

"Later, we looked for Alim the entire day in fourvillages," said Ataur. "But we couldn't find him.”

Little did they know this Abdul Alim would go on to be a minister in an independent Bangladesh.