Maksuda Begum, the first wife of Gazi Nazrul Islam, member of parliament for the Satkhira-4 constituency, has been sent to jail after the end of her remand. She was arrested in a suicide-abetment case filed at Sher-e-Bangla Nagar police station in the capital. Dhaka metropolitan magistrate Ripon Hossain gave the order on Tuesday.
Maksuda Begum was produced in court after midday on Tuesday. The case’s investigating officer, Detective Branch inspector Mohammad Salauddin, applied for her to be held in jail until the investigation was complete. The court ordered her sent to jail at the end of the hearing.
SI Rafiqul Islam, general registration officer at Sher-e-Bangla Nagar police station, confirmed the matter.
Maksuda Begum was taken on a one-day remand on Monday. MP Gazi Nazrul Islam was taken on a four-day remand the same day.
Earlier, on Sunday, police recovered the hanging body of Gazi Nazrul’s second wife, Mariam Khatun, from flat 203 on the third floor of building five of Nam Bhaban, under Sher-e-Bangla Nagar police station in the capital. Gazi Nazrul and his first wife were detained afterwards.
Mariam Khatun’s father, Md Masum Billah, filed a suicide-abetment case at Sher-e-Bangla Nagar police station over the death. Three people were named as accused in the case: MP Gazi Nazrul Islam, his wife Maksuda Begum, and Masum Billah’s brother-in-law Obaidur Rahman.
The complainant alleged in the case that Mariam had married Gazi Nazrul in June under Islamic sharia. Because he was a member of parliament, Mariam lived with the MP’s first wife Maksuda Begum on the third floor of building five of Nam Bhaban, opposite the parliament building in the Manik Mia Avenue area under Sher-e-Bangla Nagar police station. The marriage took place at the direct instigation of the accused Obaidur Rahman, the case says.
Mariam told her family by mobile phone at various times that Nazrul and his first wife had subjected her to physical and mental abuse after the marriage, according to the case. At around 5:30pm on Sunday (September 20), Gazi Nazrul telephoned her father and told him to come to their house quickly. On reaching the house, Mariam’s father learned that she had taken her own life in an inner room, hanging herself from a fan by her orna.
Sher-e-Bangla Nagar police later broke down the door, entered and recovered Mariam’s body. A suicide note was also recovered from the bed. The case alleges that her daughter took her own life because she could not endure the physical and mental abuse by the accused, and at their instigation.
Gazi Nazrul Islam came under discussion and criticism in July after several videos of private moments between him and Mariam Khatun spread on social media.