Published : 21 Sep 2026, 02:03 PM
Updated : 21 Sep 2026, 02:27 PM
Police are set to seek seven days’ remand to question lawmaker Gazi Nazrul Islam and his first wife Maksuda Begum in custody in a case accusing them of abetting the suicide of the expelled Jamaat-e-Islami politician's second wife Mariam Khatun.
The investigating officer, Sher-e-Bangla Nagar Police Station Sub-Inspector Md Shamsuzzoha Sarkar, said the two were being taken to court on Monday.
Sub-Inspector Rafiqul Islam of the prosecution division said the request was expected to be heard by the court of Dhaka Metropolitan Magistrate Mohammad Ehsanul Islam.
Police recovered Mariam’s body from a flat at NAM Bhaban opposite the parliament complex on Sunday evening.
Nazrul and Maksuda were taken into custody later that night.
Mariam’s father, SM Masum Billah, then filed a case accusing Nazrul, Maksuda and Mariam’s maternal uncle, Obaidur Rahman, of abetting her suicide.
Tejgaon Division Deputy Commissioner of Police Ibne Mizan said the speaker of parliament had been informed of the MP’s arrest.
Allegations in Case Statement
According to the case statement, Masum alleged that his elder daughter Mariam, 19, married Nazrul in June at the “direct instigation” of Obaidur Rahman.
Mariam had been living with Nazrul and Maksuda at their NAM Bhaban flat, the complaint said.
Masum alleged that Mariam had told her family she was subjected to physical and mental abuse by Nazrul and Maksuda after the marriage.
He said Nazrul called him around 5:30pm on Sunday and asked him to come to the flat quickly.
When he arrived, Masum said, he found his daughter hanging.
Masum said in the case statement that he found several handwritten notes on Mariam’s bed as her body was being recovered.
In one note, Mariam wrote: “I bow down to you again and again only because I have grown attached to you. Otherwise, I am not as cheap as you think I am.”
In another, she described having entered a “battle” out of trust, only to realise at the end that the person she trusted was “the commander of the opposing side”.
In another note, Mariam appeared to reflect on her relationship with a married man.
“He was another woman’s husband. On paper, his wife had the rights over him. And I was the fool. I had made someone else’s husband the man I desired for myself,” she wrote.
A separate passage read: “Losing someone is more honourable than having only half of them. Because love is never something to be shared. Love is either whole, or it remains incomplete.”
Video and Party Action
On Jul 20, a video showing what appeared to be intimate moments between Nazrul and Mariam at a hotel in Dhaka’s Moghbazar circulated on Facebook.
Jamaat-e-Islami leaders and activists initially claimed the video had been created using AI.
Nazrul later said in a Facebook post that Mariam was his second wife.
Jamaat decided on Jul 22 to expel him after saying an internal investigation had found evidence of moral misconduct.
The opposition party later wrote to the speaker and the Election Commission informing them of the decision.
