One commits crime, police arrest someone else

After working hard all day long, Rajan Bhuiyan went to bed on the night of October 18 but without any knowledge of what was going to happen to him the next morning.

He woke up early in the morning at the continuous knocking on his door.

He fell from the blue when he was told that a police team had come to arrest him on a warrant that had been pending for six years in a narcotics case in Dhaka.

Rajan Bhuiyan, the third son of late Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan from Gopalnagar village of Brahmanpara in Cumilla, pleaded with the police that they might have been misinformed, but Sub-Inspector Arshad Ali was adamant about arresting him.

"I told SI Arshad Ali [from the Brahmanpara Police Station] that he had wrongfully arrested my younger brother. But the sub-inspector told me he could do nothing because a local gatekeeper had identified Rajan Bhuiyan as the accused," said Rajan's elder brother Sumon.

Not only that, when the real offender – Habibullah Rajan, from the same village - came to surrender and seek bail at the court on November 6 this year, the court asked him to reappear at the court on November 11.

However, after serving nearly one month in Dhaka Central Jail, Rajan Bhuiyan finally got bail on Monday at a Dhaka court which also set December 4 for the hearing of his acquittal.

The court also served two show-cause notices to Brahmanpara Police Station's Officer-in-Charge Azam Uddin and Sub-Inspector Arshad Ali for sending an innocent person to jail.

The order was passed by Dhaka Speedy Trial Tribunal-1 Judge Abu Zafar Md Kamruzzaman.

On May 9, 2012, a narcotics case was filed against Habibullah Rajan at the Bangshal Police Station after police confiscated 28 syringes containing drugs from him at the Nayabazar area in Old Dhaka.

Habibullah served 21 days in jail over that case. He got out the same year after court granted him bail.

Habibullah regularly attended court hearings for a few months, but suddenly he went into hiding. As a result, the court issued an arrest warrant against him on June 6, 2013.

More than six years later, Brahamanpara Police Station's Sub-Inspector Arshad Ali arrested Rajan Bhuiyan and sent him to jail.

During the hearing at the court on Monday, lawyers Nikunja Bihar Acharya and Asif Mahmud stood for Rajan Bhuiyan and argued for his acquittal because the real accused had surrendered at the court after seven years.

Special Public Prosecutor Abdullah Bhuiyan said he would request the tribunal to order a probe into the incident to take action against Sub-Inspector Arshad Ali for unjustly arresting Rajan Bhuiyan.

Brahmanpara Police Station's OC Azam Uddin said the gatekeeper had told him on Saturday last that Rajan Bhuiyan had been wrongfully arrested by Sub-Inspector Arshad Ali. "We will take action against Arshad Ali after probing the incident."