Motiur said the police came quietly, woke Jalil and told him to come with them. When Jalil tried to call out to someone, a policeman pressed a gun to his head and told him that if he made a sound, they would shoot him.
That was how they took Jalil away.
When his wife woke in the morning and found him gone, she first assumed he had gone for Fajr namaz (the first of the ritual five a day). But when the morning wore on and he still did not return, Motiur and other neighbours began searching everywhere.
There was no trace of him.
Finally, someone in the village said the police had entered the village at night. Could they have taken him?
There was a police camp within walking distance. Everyone went there together.
“Baro-babu, (the senior officer at the camp), is not a good man,” Motiur told us. “If somebody makes a complaint, he summons the complainant and the accused separately, and frightens and extracts money from them both.”
The police had information, Baro-babu said, that Jalil was a Bangladeshi. So, he was handed over to the BSF. The villagers were dumbfounded. They demanded to know who had said Jalil was Bangladeshi when his family had lived there for generations. Nobody in the family had even seen the Bangladesh border. Jalil’s name had remained on the voter list after the SIR. Jalil had voted in the election.
Baro-babu roared: “We have all the information. The days when you could raise your voice like this are over. The government has changed now.”
Still Motiur Rahman and the others did not curl up in fear. They resolved to try every possible way to bring Jalil back. Motiur collected every document he could find: Jalil’s voter card, his Aadhaar card, ration card and panchayat papers. He even obtained proof that Jalil’s grandparents had appeared on the electoral rolls in elections held in the 1950s.
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