KOLKATA: The father of Shariful Fakir, the illegal Bangladeshi immigrant arrested by Mumbai Police for allegedly stabbing actor Saif Ali Khan, has vowed to make his son’s “harassment” by Indian agencies an election issue when polls are held in Bangladesh.
Md Rohul Amin, Shariful’s father who is also a BNP village functionary, told TOI that Shariful and his other son were also loyal workers of the party. “Police in India framed my son just because he has some similarities. I am likely to contest in the rural local body elections, and there I will voice how police in India torture Bangladeshis. My son is a perfect example. Mumbai Police arrested my son as a suspect but he is not the one whose photograph the police had released. He is an easy target just because he entered India illegally in April last year,” said Amin (55) on Friday.
On Friday, he received a text message from the legal aid cell lawyer provided for Shariful in Mumbai. He has asked him to call or visit him at his chamber in India. “I will call him later in the night with all the relevant documents. It’s a tough fight but we will not budge,” said Amin.
TOI on Friday wrote that Shariful’s father claimed that the man in CCTV footage was not his son. Mumbai Police, however, claimed fingerprints from the crime scene matched Shariful’s.
Speaking to TOI, Amin, the vice-president of BNP’s Union Parishad division at Jhalokhathi district of Bangladesh, said during the Awami League regime, there was a lot of political turmoil, many of them went underground after Sheikh Hasina’s govt came back to power early last year. “My son, who was an active supporter of Khaleda Zia, was also facing immense backlash. So he had to leave Bangladesh. Now that the situation has changed and that we will participate in the elections again, I will definitely make noise about my son’s false arrest,” Amin said.
Amin added that he had already started speaking to senior BNP leaders and will visit the office of external affairs and the Indian High Commission this Sunday, seeking their intervention and to pile diplomatic pressure on India. “My son is not a criminal. Fear of life in Bangladesh and aspiration for a better future forced him to leave Bangladesh and enter India illegally, but he can never attack someone or enter someone’s home to steal. Police in Mumbai are framing him just because he has some facial similarities with the suspect,” claimed Amin.
Fakir is the second of Amin’s three sons. His older son is employed at a private company in Dhaka and the younger one is still in school. Shariful left school after the 10th grade and started taking up odd jobs when Amin lost his position at the Khulna jute mill. Fakir is unmarried.
“India is a big country where several people may look similar. It defies logic that my son, who was in India for barely eight months, had the audacity to enter a celebrity actor’s home and attack him and escape. Just because the relations between Bangladesh and India have been sour of late, my son has been made the scapegoat,” Amin added.
