For 45 years, Major (retd) Md Mozaffar Hossain — sentenced to death in the case over the killing of former president Ziaur Rahman — evaded the law by concealing his identity. In the end, a slip while identifying himself ended his disguise, and following that lead detective (DB) police raided a home in Dhaka’s Banani DOHS and arrested him.
Mozaffar had erased his real identity entirely, taking a new alias and changing his appearance and dress. Over 45 years he cut off all contact with family and old acquaintances so that no call-tracking or surveillance could find him. Late in life he returned to Bangladesh in great secrecy and settled in Banani DOHS, one of the capital’s most secure and upscale areas; as a former army officer the DOHS was familiar ground, but there he presented himself as an ordinary, elderly, apolitical citizen, and neighbours never imagined the old man beside them was a principal killer sentenced to death in one of the country’s most sensational presidential assassinations.
Asked how the fugitive was caught after so long, a DB officer involved in the operation said Mozaffar was a prime example of the lengths criminals go to in order to evade the law — changing his looks, bearing, even his profession and residence to live under a wholly different identity, leaving police and intelligence with no clear clue to his whereabouts. But however flawless a crime, some trace of the criminal always remains, the officer said, and it was that trace that finally allowed the DB to arrest him. He said investigators had begun by tracing the workplace of Mozaffar’s daughter, who works at a private telecom firm; over several months, by watching her workplace and movements, they identified a likely address, then kept the house under surveillance to confirm his presence. Detectives already had a recorded physical marker: a mole-like dark spot just below his nose that, however much he changed his face, he could not alter. They fixed on this as their main identifying clue.
Late on Wednesday night the moment came. A detective team in disguise knocked at the door, behaving like ordinary guests rather than showing any sign of a raid, and asked whether the daughter was home, introducing themselves as staff from the telecom office. An elderly man came to the door asking why office work had come so late at night. In the dim light officers spotted the familiar mole below his nose. When they said, “Elder, we don’t know you — who are you? Let us meet the person we came for,” the man answered plainly and with some confidence, “I am Mozaffar. The girl’s father.” With that the DB team lost no time; handcuffs came out and the long-disguised, cunning fugitive was in custody.
Records show Major (retd) Md Mozaffar Hossain was one of the principal planners of the military coup of 31 May 1981 and an active member of the killing squad.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report