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Commit crime, get someone else to serve time

Hasan Jahid Tusher
Nasir Uddin Khokon probably had no idea what he was stepping into.
A day labourer from Munshiganj, Khokon was lured into a Tk 5 lakh "job" given by Mohammad Jamal Sheikh, a rape accused.
The poor man thought that the money would turn the wheel of his fortune and accepted the "offer". His job was to surrender before a court impersonating Jamal. Little did he know that Jamal had been awarded life sentence in a rape case.
The moment Khokon surrendered, the court sent him to jail.
Khokon was dumfounded and Jamal, who was with him at the moment under a different identity, assured him of his release within two months. But neither the assurance of release nor the promise of
money was kept.
Instead, while Khokon has been languishing in jail for over three years for a crime he did not commit, Jamal was moving about freely with new names like Nuruzzaman or Kamal.
However, the good days of clever Jamal came to an end on Thursday when he was arrested by Tejgaon Industrial Police.
It all started in 2005. One Abdul Jabbar Fakir of Singpara village under Munshiganj's Srinagar filed a rape case under the Special Tribunal for Prevention of Women and Children Repression in Munshiganj on 19 May 2005 against Jamal, who was already married and had three sons.
In the case details, he stated Jamal took Fakir’s sister-in-law to his residence on North Lutfor Rahman Lane at Kotwali in the capital on May 4, 2005 on the pretext of returning Tk 10,000 he owed her. There Jamal raped the woman, who was also a distant relative of Jamal.
The woman, then aged about 36, went under a medical exam-
ination on May 9 at Dhaka Medical College Hospital and the report confirmed the rape incident.
The case proceedings went on while Jamal was in Dubai for the whole time. The tribunal on June 30, 2007 sentenced Jamal to life in jail and fined Tk 10,000 or to serve another year of rigorous imprisonment in default.
Jamal, who was a manpower export broker, meanwhile managed to reach a deal with the plaintiff that Fakir would withdraw the case in exchange of a certain amount of money. But when he returned home in 2011, he came to know that he had already been awarded the jail term.
"I then talked to my lawyer to determine the next step. He and I then convinced Khokon to surrender before the court impersonating me," Jamal claimed before The Daily Star at Tejgaon Industrial Police Station.
Jamal, now aged around 50, admitted that Khokon was fully innocent.
He also claimed that the rape case against him was fabricated and plaintiff Fakir borrowed some money from him but was not paying it back.
"When I was pressing him for the money, he filed the false case," he claimed.
The Daily Star contacted Jamal's brother Mohammad Yasmir over the phone. He said at a village arbitration it was decided that Fakir will take Tk 1.5 lakh and withdraw the case but did not do so.
He also termed the case false but said his brother had enmity with the plaintiff over some financial transaction. The call was then disconnected from his end.
Investigation Officer Jahangir Alam of the police station said they arrested Jamal after conducting a month-long inquiry in this regard.
Officer-in-Charge of the police station Mohammad Salahuddin said they would send Jamal to the court with a detailed report of his case and punishment so that the court could take necessary steps to free the innocent.
He also said Khokon is perhaps in Kashimpur Jail now.
The families of Khokon and the rape victim could not be contacted as neither Jamal nor the police could provide any contact details.