CCTV evidence raises questions over RAB arrests in schoolteacher’s fatal bag-snatching

Fresh inconsistencies have emerged in the Rapid Action Battalion’s (RAB) account of the arrests made over the death of a schoolteacher who fell from a rickshaw during a bag-snatching near parliament in Dhaka.

A day after the incident, RAB-2 said it had recovered the motorcycle used in the snatching and arrested two suspected perpetrators along with the bike’s owner.

But questions quickly surfaced over whether the seized motorcycle was the one seen in CCTV footage of the attack. Its make, model, and colour appeared different from the bike captured on camera.

An investigation by bdnews24.com has now uncovered further evidence that raises questions about RAB’s version of events.

The first information report filed after Ronjila Parvin’s death puts the incident at 5:55am on Aug 29.

CCTV footage from the garage of motorcycle owner Rakib Bepari, also known as Rakib Hossain Bepari, shows the bike parked there around that time.

Footage from other locations also appears to place arrested suspects Mosharraf Hossain Poni, also known as Para Poni, and Cedric Julian elsewhere close to the time of the attack.

The three arrested men were questioned in police custody for five days. Their remand ended on Friday.

Ronjila, headteacher of Bagbari Girls’ Government Primary School in Bogura’s Gabtali, had travelled to Dhaka with her husband Abdul Matin for medical treatment.

After getting off a bus at Gabtali terminal early on Aug 29, they took a rickshaw towards a hospital.

As they passed the south plaza of the parliament complex, two men on a motorcycle allegedly tried to snatch the bag Ronjila was carrying.

She was thrown from the rickshaw and suffered a serious head injury. Doctors later declared her dead.

Rakib Returns Home with Bike At 2:06am

RAB-2 presented Rakib’s motorcycle on Aug 30 as the vehicle allegedly used in the attack.

But CCTV from a building near Rakib’s home in West Arjatpara shows him arriving there on the motorcycle at 2:06am, less than four hours before the time of the incident recorded in the FIR.

Rakib was driving and his friend Hridoy was riding pillion.

Hridoy told bdnews24.com on Thursday that they had been together outside Government Science College in Tejgaon until around 2am.

“After that, Rakib and I went to his house together on the bike,” he said.

Hridoy said it had been Rakib’s wedding anniversary the previous day. He had been unable to attend a gathering, so Rakib’s wife Sumaiya Islam had saved some food for him.

“I went to Rakib’s house to collect the food and left shortly afterwards,” he said.

bdnews24.com reviewed footage from around 3:48am, 5am, 5:30am, 5:32am, 5:35am, and 5:55am.

The motorcycle appears to remain in the same place inside the garage throughout.

There is no security guard at the building, but bdnews24.com found a man who said he had seen the motorcycle there that morning.

Sumon — a distant relative and neighbour of Rakib’s family, identified with a single name —had been carrying out air-conditioning and electrical work at the building for several days.

He said he passed the property after Fajr prayers.

“I know the inside and outside of the house because I work there. I saw the bike from outside. It would have been sometime between 5:30am and 6am.”

At its Aug 30 briefing, RAB-2 Commanding Officer Naimul Hasan said Poni would take Rakib’s motorcycle “by force” from time to time.

He said Poni had taken the bike from Aug 26 and returned it on the afternoon of Aug 29.

“Poni would often take his bike,” Naimul said. “But the bike owner had no idea that Poni was using it for snatching or anything like that.”

Rakib’s wife disputes that account.

“What the commanding officer said, that [Poni] had Rakib’s bike for four days, is false,” Sumaiya told bdnews24.com.

“I know the bike was with Rakib.”

She also said Rakib returned home with the motorcycle several hours before the attack and did not take it out again until the night of Aug 29.

Poni at Cedric’s Home on Night of Incident

Footage from a camcorder inside Cedric’s home in Tejturi Bazar also raises questions over the movements of Poni and Cedric around the time of the incident.

The footage shows Cedric, Poni and another man, identified only as Shakib, inside the room between 4:33am and 4:34am.

At one point they dressed before leaving the house together.

Cedric put on a grey-gold round-neck T-shirt, while Poni wore an off-white jersey-style T-shirt bearing an Adidas logo. Shakib wore a black T-shirt with an image printed across the chest.

Earlier footage appears to show them taking drugs.

At 5:41:14am, Cedric and Poni are seen returning to the room using the lights on their mobile phones.

Both are carrying food wrapped in polythene.

They put down the food and their phones and begin taking off their shirts.

At 5:42:41am, Shakib enters, also using his phone’s light.

He takes a paper-wrapped item from his pocket, examines it and then removes his shirt.

Cedric places the food on two plates before all three sit down to eat.

Asked where they had been between 4:33am and 5:42am, Poni’s elder brother Rony Khan said they had gone to a market inside the Geneva Camp.

“They went there and bought food,” he told bdnews24.com.

“Maybe they bought drugs as well.”

Asked how he knew, Rony said he had spoken to Poni after his arrest.

“He told me these things. They left the house and went to the camp by CNG (auto-rickshaw). They came back by rickshaw.”

bdnews24.com could not locate Shakib in the neighbourhood.

His elder and younger brothers said Poni and Cedric had gone to the camp without him after leaving the house.

Asked about the footage and the other information, RAB-2 chief Naimul said the men had repeatedly been described as suspects.

“We have said again and again that these three were arrested as suspects,” he said.

“If the police investigation finds they are innocent, then that is good. There is nothing for us to do about that.”

Arrest Locations Mismatch

There are also discrepancies between the arrest locations recorded in the case documents and accounts gathered by bdnews24.com.

The FIR says Poni and Cedric were detained at 11:45am on Aug 30 from a road in front of Gazi Abbas’s house in East Tejturi Para under Tejgaon Police Station.

It says an Android phone was recovered from each of them, along with Tk 5,000 in cash.

But a visit to the neighbourhood produced a different account.

Poni was taken from a flat in the “Property Row” building opposite Government Science College, according to a security guard there.

Khorshed Alam, 55, said RAB personnel arrived at about 1:45am on Aug 30, woke Poni, and took him away.

Asked how many people were detained from the building, he replied: “Only one.”

Shown photographs of Poni and Cedric, Khorshed pointed to Poni and said: “He was the one they took from here.”

Cedric, according to people in the area, was detained from another house near Chowrangi intersection.

When bdnews24.com visited on Thursday, the two-storey house was locked. Two tailoring shops operate downstairs and there is a grocery store in front. The house and the two tailoring shops belong to Cedric’s father.

A tea seller nearby said he arrived to open his shop around 6:30am and found people gathered outside.

“The night guard and several people returning from prayers were saying ‘They have taken him away,’” he said.

‘Poni Had Dispute with RAB Source’

Poni’s family has made another allegation involving a longstanding dispute with a man from the Geneva Camp in Mohammadpur.

Kamran is the brother of Aftab Hossain, proprietor of Faizane Madina Biryani House, popularly known in the camp as “Boba’s Biryani”.

Residents allege Kamran has been involved in drug dealing and is also known locally as a source for RAB.

bdnews24.com has not independently verified either allegation.

Several residents said Poni and Kamran had been at odds for some time.

They said Poni assaulted Kamran about two weeks before Ranjila’s death and the two argued again when Poni visited the camp on the night before his arrest.

Poni’s family suspects that dispute may have led to his name being passed on to RAB.

Rony said that when an officer arrived to arrest Poni, his brother immediately asked: “Did Kamran send you?”

According to Rony, the officer appeared surprised by the question.

But he could not explain the origins of the dispute.

Calls to Kamran’s mobile phone went unanswered because it was switched off.

At his briefing, however, Naimul said RAB had relied on several local sources when trying to identify the men seen in the CCTV footage.

“When we showed the pictures and videos to our local sources, around 15 people confirmed to us that it was none other than Poni,” he said.

“The CCTV footage itself was not very clear.”

Questions over Bike Colour, Model

After RAB’s Aug 30 briefing, Poni and Cedric were brought before journalists outside the RAB-2 headquarters.

Poni shouted that he had no involvement in the incident and had been detained by force.

He also drew attention to the motorcycle.

His bike, he said, was silver and black, while the motorcycle seen during the snatching appeared blue.

He urged journalists to investigate the difference before RAB personnel moved him away.

Asked about the discrepancy, Naimul said he had shown the recovered bike to Ranjila’s husband.

According to the RAB officer, Abdul Matin had said: “This is exactly the bike.”

But Matin gave bdnews24.com a different account.

“When the incident happened, I was busy with [my wife],” he said.

“I did not notice the colour, or what kind of motorcycle it was. I could not identify the colour at the time.”

He said he wanted a proper investigation and punishment for those responsible.

“There is nothing the administration cannot do if it tries,” he said. “I want a fair investigation so that whoever committed the crime is punished.”

Two CCTV videos of the incident have been carried by several news organisations.

They show two men moving around the road outside parliament’s South Plaza, on what appears to be a blue motorcycle.

The motorcycle displayed by RAB, however, appears silver and black.

To examine whether lighting conditions could account for the difference, bdnews24.com showed the footage and photographs to Dipti Rani Datta, an assistant professor at the Department of Oriental Art at Dhaka University’s Faculty of Fine Art.

She pointed to a digital LED banner bearing the Grameenphone logo visible beside the road.

Its colour on camera was broadly consistent with how it appears to the naked eye, she said.

The colour of a red-brick gate in the footage also showed no major change, while the colours of roadside structures and the riders’ clothes remained largely consistent.

“There is little possibility of such a major change in colour because of reflected light or movement,” she said.

Motorcycle content creator Riku Amir also examined the images.

He identified the motorcycle seen in the CCTV footage as a Suzuki Gixxer SF 2020.

The motorcycle recovered by RAB, he said, was a Yamaha R15.

“They are two different motorcycles,” he said.

People familiar with motorcycles told bdnews24.com the Suzuki Gixxer seen in the footage could be black or navy blue, while much of the front bodywork of the Yamaha seized by RAB was white or pearl-coloured.

DB ‘Working to Uncover Truth’

Amid the questions surrounding the arrests and motorcycle, Dhaka Metropolitan Police’s Detective Branch chief Shafiqul Islam says investigators are working to establish “the actual truth”.

“This was a widely discussed incident and everyone began working on it immediately,” he told a press conference last week.

“An investigation is a huge process. When something like this happens, all the agencies get involved.”

Shafiqul said an investigation could require people to be detained initially as suspects.

“We cannot immediately say a specific person was definitely there and arrest that person,” he said.

“It may be that someone has been detained as a suspect. That is now being investigated. The actual truth will come out through the investigation.”

Alongside the police station investigation, the detectives is carrying out a separate inquiry, he said.

Shafiqul said Poni had previously been named in 12 snatching cases and could not therefore be portrayed as entirely beyond suspicion.

“We are all in the ground and working,” he said.

“We will bring the real offender to justice. You can have that much confidence in us.”

What Experts Say

Supreme Court lawyer Azizur Rahman Dulu said the evidence uncovered by bdnews24.com, if accurate, raised serious questions.

“If what you are saying is true, RAB’s actions in this case can be described as questionable,” he said.

Defence lawyers, according to Advocate Dulu, could use such discrepancies in seeking bail.

“If the defence can establish that the information and evidence presented by RAB are wrong, there are legal provisions for action against the officials involved,” he said, while noting that any such process would involve several stages.

Omar Faruk, chairman of the Department of Criminology and Police Science at the Mawlana Bhashani Science and Technology University, warned that arresting the wrong people could allow the offenders to remain free.

“If the real offenders are not arrested and something like this is done instead, the biggest problem is that the actual criminals remain outside the reach of the law,” he said.

“That can encourage them to continue committing crimes.”

Such actions could give the public a sense of immediate reassurance, Prof Faruk said, but damage confidence in law enforcement over time.

“If an incident is constructed while the actual offenders are left out, I would call that a very ominous step,” he said.

“If those arrested are not the real offenders, they themselves become victims. It undermines the fairness of justice.”

He said identifying and prosecuting the real perpetrators would instead strengthen public confidence.

“If the real offenders are brought to justice, that will have a positive effect. People will feel safer and more reassured,” he said.

“But if incidents are manufactured, such practices will eventually become a danger to the public.”

RAB-2 Deputy Director for Media Major M Mubin Rahman Tapas said the three had been detained as suspects and had given “inconsistent and confusing” information during questioning.

He described Poni as a known professional snatcher and said 13 cases had been filed against him.

RAB also detected their mobile phones on a tower very close to the scene around the time of the incident, he said.

“When Cedric’s house was searched, we found several motorcycle keys,” Tapas said.

“Cedric could not give a satisfactory explanation for what they were for.

“We detained them as suspects. That is something you are not mentioning,” he said.