Blogger Ahmed Rajib Hyder(Shovon), writing under the pseudonym “Thaba baba”, was known for his strong anti-religion rhetoric and his equally vocal opposition to the “Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islam” party, which aided and actively participated in the genocide of Bengali population alongside the Pakistani army in the liberation war of Bangladesh in 1971. He was also an active participant in the ongoing Shahbag movement that commenced in the eve of the badly received verdict of Jamaat leader and war-criminal Abdul Qader Mollah on 5th February. His murder marked a crucial point in the Shahbag movement. Here’s a timeline of his murder and its aftermath:-
1) Police found Rajib’s mangled corpse near his house in the Pallabi area of Mirpur at around 9:45 pm on 15th February. According to officer Kamal Hossain, he was jabbed with sharp weapons in his head, cheek and shoulder before his throat was finally slit. Two bloody machetes and his blood stained computer were found at the scene.
2)
A possibly incriminating blog post comes to light that very night. Posted on Jamaat owned “Sonar Bangladesh blog” on 11th February, just 4 days before the murder, the aliased blogger depicted Rajib as one of the leaders of the movement(which he was not) and also a regular contributor to dhormockery blog, which lampoons and critiques religion. This allusive blog post was erased few hours later and the blog site subsequently went offline.
3) URL of a blog(nuranichapa.wordpress.com) titled “Nurani chapa”(sacred lies) containing vitriolic writings on Islam was widely circulated on Facebook and other social media, and authorship of the blog was attributed to Ahmed Rajib Hyder. The address of this blog was first posted in a Pakistani military forum, http://defence.pk/forums/bangladesh-defence/235241-blogger-thaba-baba-murdered, just two hours after the estimated time of Rajib’s murder.
The blog contained 19 posts, all of which were shown to be published within 18th June to 2nd October of 2012. However, according to quantcast.com, the site received around 60000 hits on the night of the murder but not a single hit before February 15. Alexa.com produced the same finding. According to blogger Sushanta Das Gupta, 3 posts were published on 18th June, 1 post on 21st June, 1 post on 24th June and, surprisingly, 9 posts on 26th June! The blog remained inactive throughout July until 4 posts were published on 26th August and the last post on 2nd October. Even though Rajib Hyder was very active in most of the community blogs, none of these posts were published in them and commented on, and it should be remembered that Rajib never concealed his staunch anti-theism in the blogosphere.
Mr. Sushanta has further pointed out that even though the blog was shown to be published a year ago, there’s no trace of it in web archive.
http:// web.archive.org/web/*/http://nuranichapa.wordpress.com
It is now assumed that the blog had been fabricated after the murder and carefully publicized to steer public opinion against the deceased blogger, and also to slap an “anti-Islam” label on Shahbag demonstration.[http://bdnews24.com/bangladesh/2013/02/25/nurani-chapa-not-rajibs]
4) Coffin of Rajib Hyder was clothed in national flag and carried to Shahbag on Saturday evening 16th February, where he was given a guard of honor, named the first martyr of the movement and a pledge was made touching the coffin that the movement shall continue until the murderers were brought to justice and fair verdicts were given for all the war-criminals that would do justice to their victims.[http://www.prothom-alo.com/detail/date/2013-02-16/news/329668]
5) PM Sheikh Hasina and Home Minister Mohiuddin Khan Alamgir visited Rajib’s home on Saturday eve and promised to bring the murderers to justice as soon as possible.
6) Secretary General of Jamaat Maulana Rafikul Islam Khan denied allegations against Jamaat-e-Islam and its student wing Islami Chattra Shibir for the murder on 16th February [http://www.prothom-alo.com/detail/news/329907]
7) Rajib’s father filed a case in Pallabi Police station at dawn of February 16. No one in particular was arraigned.
. National Parliament expressed grief about Rajib’s murder on February 17
9) “Kapasia Ganajagaron Front” of Kapasia, Gazipur was named after blogger Rajib Hyder . Point to be noted - “Kapasia Ganajagaron Front” is just one out of many “Ganajagaron Front” scattered throughout the country to spread the spirit of Shahbag at the grassroots level.
10) Rajib’s funeral prayer in “Chittagong Ganajagoron Front” attracted thousands of people[http://bangla.bdnews24.com/bangladesh/article591505.bdnews]
11) Architect Rajib’s design of Kapasia’s proposed Liberation War Memorial got approved by the Liberation war ministry
12) A High Court Judge Mohammad Mijanur Rahman Bhuiyan was taken to task for spreading abusive leaflets about Rajib Hyder in High Court area, calling Rajib an “apostate” and comparing him with Salman Rushdie.[http://unsbd.com/?p=4696]
13) An alleged Hizb-ut-Tahrir member Farabi Shafiur Rahman was arrested from Chittagong University campus on 24th February for posting death threats on Facebook against the imam(Islamic cleric who leads prayers) who administered Rajib Hyder's funeral prayer. He was later handed to Detective Branch(DB) Police for interrogation.[http://bdnews24.com/bangladesh/2013/02/25/farabi-in-db-custody]
14)
5 students of North South University, a private university situated in Dhaka, were arrested on 2nd March as suspects of Rajb’s murder, which they later confessed. They are - Faisal bin Nayeem(22), Maksudul Hasan Anik(26), Ehsanur Reza Rumman(23), Nayeem Shikder Irad(19) and Nafis Imtiaz(22). Two machetes, four knives, one bicycle, one pair of shoes, seven cellphones and a school bag were salvaged from them. Faisal was a student of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Rumman and Shikder both were students of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering and Nafis was a student of Business Administration. Their studentships were promptly cancelled after the arrest.
According to police, these five students were recruited and tutored in fundamentalist ideology by a certain “Nana bhai”(pseudonym), a final year student of BBA in the same varsity and a self-proclaimed ex-activist of Islami Chattra Shibir, the student wing of Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islam. In their religious meetings in the varsity’s prayer room, Nana bhai made a list of 8 “anti-Islam” bloggers who needed to be slayed and Rajib Hyder was at the top of the list. Apart from these five arrested men, four other squads have been reported to be in operation for murdering the blacklisted bloggers. Plans for Rajib’s murder were formulated at the start of February and finalized after February 5. Nana bhai supplied them with blog posts and Facebook statuses authored by Rajib to motivate and inform them about their victim.
The group was divided into two wings – intelligence wing and execution wing. After collecting all the necessary information about “Thaba Baba”, the “intelligence group” started a mission to identify him physically on February 9, said Monirul Islam, Joint Commissioner of Dhaka Metropolitan Police. Within the next couple of days, the group identified Rajib through his friends. On February 11, Rumman followed their target from Shahbagh square to Mirpur-10 intersection. “Rajib was in a bus and Rumman followed him by a bicycle,” said the police official. Rumman failed to find out Rajib's house that day. But the next day he succeeded to locate his place at Palashnagar. “The group later started to collect information from locals regarding his profession, lifestyle, relatives, etc to finalise their killing plan,” said Monirul. Anik and a couple of others went to Notun Bazar and bought machetes and knives. Anik paid the money, the arrestees said. On the day of the killing, the group came to know from Rajib's Facebook page that he would not go to Shahbagh that day and rushed hurriedly to Palashnagar by bicycles and bus, said Monirul. They reached there around 4:00pm, carrying the machetes and knives in schoolbags. The group started to play cricket in an alley near the blogger's house to monitor his return. As the sun was going down, Rajib was seen returning home. When he neared the gate of his house, Dwip hit him with a machete in a bid to sever his head from the shoulder, but failed to succeed in doing so. After two more hits, the victim fell on the wall and Dwip continued to chop him, said Monirul. Anik joined Dwip this time and started to stab Rajib with a knife. As Dwip continued stabbing Rajib indiscriminately, he accidentally hit Anik in his big toe. When the killers were sure about Rajib's death they fled the scene. The killers left a machete near a tea stall while hurriedly fleeing Palashnagar after accomplishing the mission, said the DMP official. Hurt in his leg, Anik went to Kakrail and threw away his sneakers in front of Department of Films and Publications office there.
When inquired if they felt sorry about their actions, not only did the five students unapologetically claim that they were performing a religious duty but Dwip even compared the stabbing to the way a skilled carpenter hacks away at a tree. [http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=271147]
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This ghastly murder of Ahmed Rajib Hyder has laid bare the true nature of Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islam to the uninitiated, politically unconscious masses and hopefully, will help dispel the confusion in Western media that Jamaat-e-Islam is a “moderate” Islamic party. Even if one chooses to ignore its genocidal activities in ’71, it is impossible to deny its ideological affinities to Egypt’s jihadist Muslim Brotherhood. But then again, one simply cannot shove away a political party’s bloody history just like that and even pretend to be neutral about its present and future, just like how one cannot evaluate the Nazi ideology without taking into account all the bloodshed and anguish it has caused. This murder is a wake-up call for those both within and outside the country who have been lenient with this rabid animal for far too long. If you’re not the victim today, why not tomorrow?
Data courtesy- হিমু
Comments
so true................anyone can be a victim soon............unfortunately there are so many people who still fail to see the true nature of jamat shibir..............
Good effort indeed.
1. Should the Farabi case -- the person who threatened to kill the imam (prayer leader) who conducts Rajib's funeral -- included in this timeline?
2. Can you mention the time lag of the news of the killing reaching Shahbag and the news flashed/published in other media (pakistani blog, UK based news media).
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সমস্যা জীবনের অবিচ্ছেদ্য অংশ; পালিয়ে লাভ নাই।
1) Added the piece on Farabi now, thanks for the suggestion.
2) I'm trying to get a screenshot of the Pakistani forum post as the post seems to have been removed, I'll add that as soon as I get my hands on it.
As for other media outlets, I'm not sure if any of them actually posted an exclusive report on Rajib's murder, we're having a hard time as it is to get them to report on Shahbag! If I do come across any such item, I will include it.
Big Brother is watching you.
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Two of the NSU students provided statement in court today
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