KOLKATA: The 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, has claimed that the police have framed his son.
“They have arrested my son as a suspect, but he is not the one whose photograph the police had released after the incident… They have picked him up as he has some similarities. He is also an easy target just because he had entered India illegally,” Md Rohul Amin, 55, also a village level BNP functionary, told TOI over a WhatsApp call from Bangladesh.
The man in the photograph had long hair that touched his eyes. But my son has always had shorter hair raised upwards. Amin, who is also a village level Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) functionary, said he is already speaking to senior leaders 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 still studies in school. Shariful had 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 government 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 he had 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 police in Mumbai said he crossed Dawki river to reach Meghalaya and then reach West 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 West 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 district of Bangladesh.
Rohul said that on Friday evening, more than 38 hours since the stabbing incident at Saif Ali Khan’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.
“He can never loot or attack someone. Police have framed him just because he is an easy suspect. We demand justice,” he said, breaking down into tears.