KOLKATA: Father of Shariful Fakir, the illegal Bangladeshi immigrant arrested by Mumbai police for allegedly stabbing actor Saif Ali Khan during a burglary attempt at his Bandra home, claimed that police have framed his son. He said Shariful is not the person shown in the video from the initial CCTV footage released the day after the attack.
“They have arrested my son as a suspect, but he is not the one whose photograph police had released after the incident. The man in the photograph had long hair that touched his eyes. My son has always had shorter hair raised upwards. They have picked him up as he has some similarities. He is also an easy target as he had entered India illegally,” Md Rohul Amin, 55, told TOI over a WhatsApp call from Bangladesh.
Amin, who is also a village-level Bangladesh Nationalist Party functionary, said he is speaking to senior politicians in his country to raise the “false arrest” of his son as a diplomatic issue. Shariful is the second among Rohul’s three sons. While his elder son works at a private firm in Dhaka, the younger son is still in school. Shariful dropped out from school after Class 10 and started doing odd jobs after Rohul lost his job at Khulna jute mill.
“We may be poor, but we are not criminals. In Bangladesh, he used to ride a bike taxi for a living. But during the era of Awami League, there was a lot of political turmoil in our village and after Sheikh Hasina’s govt came back to power early last year. Since my son was an active supporter of Khaleda Zia, he faced immense backlash and so he decided to leave Bangladesh for better earning and living prospects,” said Rohul.
He said Shariful got in touch with an agent who helped him illegally cross the border and enter India in April last year. While Mumbai police said he crossed Dawki river to reach Meghalaya and then reach Bengal via Assam, his father couldn’t specify the details. “He hadn’t shared with us about how he had exactly entered India but there are multiple persons like him who leave Bangladesh and head for India illegally for work. Once he reached India, he went to Bengal and worked at a restaurant for a few days, before he went to Mumbai and started working at a bar. He had also met a relative of ours in Bengal but he refused him accommodation,” said Rohul, who now works as a farmer at Rajabaria village in Jhalokhathi of Bangladesh.
Rohul said Friday evening, more than 38 hours since the stabbing incident at Saif’s Bandra residence, Shariful called home and told his father that he had transferred 10,000 Bangladeshi taka via a hawala agent leaving only 3,000 taka for himself. “We know he had done several illegal things, like straying into India and sending money illegally. He may have some politically-motivated cases against him in Bangladesh but one thing I can assure is that my son is not a criminal. He can never loot or attack someone. We demand justice,” he said, breaking down into tears.