Languishing eight excruciating years in Tihar jail allegedly for a crime they had never committed, Bangladeshi sculptor Rashid Ahmed and his daughter-in-law finally came home on Saturday, the Eid-day. They were released the previous day.
By this time, 78-year-old Rashid has lost much of his health and all his property while his daughter-in-law Nurun Nahar Lovely her only daughter.
Interestingly, they received almost no cooperation from the Bangladesh High Commission in India, except for a suggestion to keep patience and hang on there for three to four years.
Rashid Ahmed is the sculptor of Mukto Bangla at Islamic University in Kushtia and Muktijuddher Smriti Saudha in Mymensingh, while Lovely was the women affairs secretary of Bangladesh Commercial Artists Association.
On December 16, 2004, Rashid and Lovely started for India to visit the shrine of Khawaja Moinuddin Chisti in Ajmer. On December 20, they reached New Delhi via Kolkata.
There they had checked in a hotel where Rashid had an altercation with the hotel manager over room tariff, Rashid told The Daily Star yesterday at his elder daughter's house in Khilgaon.
The morning after the altercation, officials of Department of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) arrested them and two Indian citizens at the hotel on charge of possessing counterfeit Indian currency, said the sculptor, claiming that they had not had any fake rupees with them.
After the arrest, they were sent to jail after being produced before a court. The Indians detained with them, however, got bail within one and a half years.
“I don't have words to describe the last eight years,” said Rashid, adding that his health had deteriorated by this time. He had been suffering from hypertension, heart problem, asthma and diabetes. “But the torment of not being able to work beats everything,” he added.
Lovely, who lost her daughter on August 29, 2005, said they had not received any legal help at the beginning.
“As we had no money, we couldn't engage any lawyer of our own. On top of that, the government counsel never took our case seriously,” she alleged.
“We experienced that the legal system of India works differently for natives and outsiders. Though we were being produced before the court, it refused to hear our case,” Lovely said.
Rashid alleged that he got no support from the Bangladesh High Commission though he wrote to them on several occasions.
“A Bangladesh High Commission official named Asafuddoula came to meet me in the prison five months after the arrest. He recognised me and told me to have patience and wait three to four years,” said Rashid, adding that nobody from the embassy had contacted him until July this year.
He said he had, in the meantime, appealed to the Indian High Court to expedite their case proceedings, but to no avail. “When my health deteriorated further I shared the concern with the jail superintendent, who later contacted the Bangladesh High Commission and the media,” Rashid said.
He said a consular named Md Nazibur Rahman had met him last July.
After several reminders to the Indian foreign ministry by the Bangladesh High Commission since the meet and media reports in both the countries, the Delhi court dealing with their case expedite the trial procedure.
On October 10 this year, the court sentenced them seven years' imprisonment and fined Rs 1.5 lakh each. Although they had served more than the term, the two were not released from prison for not paying their fines.
They were released on October 26, when three Indians came to there help and paid the fines and gave them money to get back home. The very day Rashid and Lovely took a flight to Kolkata to catch a Dhaka-bound flight the next morning.
Lipi Rahman, Rashid's youngest daughter, said they had heard about the detention after about a month of the arrest. She said they had visited her father and sister-in-law twice, in March and June in 2005, selling their property.
Rashid, now broke and ill, urged the government to provide him with a house.