Joj Mia's miseries linger on
Joj Mia, the man who attained infamy when he was falsely-implicated in the August 21 grenade attack, still harbours hopes that one day the state will end his prolonged suffering.
It was also the state that once meted out the injustice onto him -- something it is yet to remedy.
Joj Mia's name made headlines after he was implicated in the 2004 case and he was tortured in police custody to confess to a crime he didn't commit.
When the government changed, he was released from jail in 2009, having been robbed of five years of his life.
The new government made pledges of rehabilitating him and promised him employment.
Around eight years later, those promises are yet to be fulfilled.
“I am forgotten. No one bothers to see how I am now,” said Joj Mia, 37, while speaking to this correspondent.
He was 25-years old when he was picked up and used to make a living by selling posters and cassettes near Gulistan Cinema hall.
After his case, his family lost their ancestral home in Senbagh, Noakhali, in the six-year-long legal fight for his release.
“My sister, brother and I don't have anything left,” he said in a recent interview with The Daily Star.
Joj Mia has had a tough time since the release.
His mother, who died seven months ago, had suffered from kidney complications. For her treatment, he borrowed money that he hasn't paid off yet.
He, however, tried to begin afresh, managed to get employed as a private car driver and got married two and a half years ago.
These days, he says he still feels pain in the limbs that were fractured while he was tortured in custody. Medicines give him physical relief to some extent. But the psychological pain remains ever-present.
Joj Mia's sensational story began when he was implicated as part of a plan to save the actual culprits of the August 21 attack on an Awami League rally in the capital in 2004.
He was picked up from his Senbagh house in Noakhali on June 10, 2005.
Joj Mia, who was initially clueless about the reason behind his arrest, was first taken to Senbagh Police Station. Later, Criminal Investigation Department (CID) officials brought him to the capital and tortured him.
Remembering those terrifying days, he said police had taken him to Dakkhin Khan, Uttara, at night a month after his arrest and threatened to kill him in “crossfire”.
“You are an accused in a case. If you accept the allegations you will be benefitted,” they had told him.
A few days later, police drove him to Moghbazar. His handcuffs were then removed and he was told to run.
Frightened that he would be shot from behind, Joj Mia pleaded with them not to kill him.
“I will do everything you tell me to do,” he told police.
He was made to memorise the exact script of his confession for around two weeks before his “handlers” deemed him ready.
Owing to him being an accused in an explosive case filed in 1996, Joj Mia had become an easy target.
After being arrested in the grenade attack case, his family suddenly saw the trial of the previous case -- for which he was out on bail -- gathered momentum and he was sentenced to jail.
One day, about six months into custody, the jail authority informed him that he had been convicted in the explosive case. The other accused of the case had died by then.
In an earlier interview he said, "They told me that if I agreed [to make the false confession], I would be sent abroad, and they would bear all the expenses of my family.”
Police then started giving a small amount of money -- Tk 2,000 to Tk 2,500 -- to his mother every month.
This acted as a deal sweetener for Joj Mia, who felt assured that his family would be taken care of, if he did what was asked of him.
However, once the payment stopped, Joj Mia's family disclosed the whole thing to the media, detailing how the CID tried to spread a made-up story about the grenade attack.
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