Over a week after the convenor of a new radical political party was fatally shot in a central Dhaka street, it has emerged that his real name was not Sharif Osman Hadi but Osman Goni, Dhaka University documents accessed by Northeast News reveal.
This blows the lid off an assumed identity that he carried until it was exposed by information pasted on the casket in which his body arrived from Singapore on December 19 evening.
The name of Goni’s father is recorded in the admission document as Sharif Abdul Hadi. He was admitted to the BSS (Samman) First Year First Semester, Fifth Batch. He enrolled in a Political Science undergraduate programme and lived in Ziaur Rahman Hall of Dhaka University.
Goni was previously a Dakhil student at Jhalokathi NS Kamil Madrassa and took the secondary-level examination in 2007. He took the Alim (higher secondary) examination in 2009 while being a student at the same madrassa. This madrassa is located at Hazrat Qayed Saheb Huzur Road, Nesarabad in Jhalokathi district.
The coffin in which Goni’s body was brought to Dhaka from Singapore on December 19 on Biman Bangladesh flight (Number BG-585) and was buried at Dhaka University, just next to renowned Bengali poet Qazi Nazrul Islam.
There is more information on the November 2024 ‘arrest’ of the man who shot Goni on December 12, 2025, which led to questions whether a joint operation was undertaken months in advance by Bangladesh’s notorious Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) and the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI) to achieve objectives now.
Over a year after Dhaka’s Adabor police ‘arrested’ Faisal Karim Masud alias Daud Khan, the main accused in the shooting and killing of Goni, the convenor of the newly formed Inquilab Mancha, Bangladesh’s law enforcement agencies are yet to recover BDT 17 lakh that he allegedly looted from a local resident in the area where he lived at that time.
Speaking to Northeast News over the phone, Adabor police station Officer-in-Charge Ziaur Rahman revealed that a case was lodged in November 2024 by Saiful Islam, a resident of Baitul Aman Housing Society, complaining that Masud had forcibly taken away BDT 17 lakh from him. Islam is said to originally hail from Tangail district, which is north of Dhaka.
At that time, Masud ran an IT consultancy office from the fourth floor of Baitul Aman Housing Society and occupied unit number 3C. This was earlier corroborated by Sharmin Rahman, the principal of British Columbia School and College, a small-time private institution operating from an office unit in the same society.
In a telephonic conversation with Northeast News on Saturday, the school proprietor, Mohammad Kabir Hossein, who is related to former Bangladesh President Iyazuddin Ahmed, said that he sublet a flat (unit number 3C) to Faisal Karim Masud in February 2019. An agreement was signed and the monthly rent was fixed at BDT 19,680 plus utility (electricity) charges.
Kabir Hossein said he was not sure about his tenant’s political affiliations, though he clearly remembered what Masud did for a living. “He ran some IT and tender-related businesses. He took another flat on rent, but suddenly disappeared, without serving notice, after August 5, 2024. He still owes me BDT 15 lakh in outstanding rent. Shortly thereafter, his father Mohammad Humayun Kabir met me and borrowed BDT 50,000 to make some payments,” Kabir Hossein said, adding that the BDT 17 lakh the police have linked Masud with “could be business-related.”
It is learnt that Adabor police station has a file on Masud’s arrest in November 2024. Office-in-Charge Ziaur Rahman had earlier disclosed to Northeast News that based on Saiful Islam’s complaint, the Adabor police arrested Masud on November 7, 2024, on charges of extorting BDT 17 lakh and possession of two illegal, unlicenced pistols, two magazine clips and five rounds of bullets.
“He was sent to judicial custody where he remained till February 16, 2025, when he was granted bail by the High Court. He finally left jail on February 21 this year,” the OC said on December 15.
Speaking to Northeast News on December 20, RAB Legal and Media Wing Director Wing Commander Intekhab Chowdhury confirmed the dates of Faisal Karim Masud’s release on bail and final discharge from judicial custody.
The RAB’s version is that Masud was arrested on November 8, 2024, a full one week after the complaint was lodged on November 1 that year.
Interestingly, the Hadi shooting case was lodged at Paltan police station on December 14, Wing Commander Chowdhury said, adding that the RAB, on its part, has so far arrested seven persons under Sections 54 and 307 of the Bangladesh Penal Code (BPC). The arrested persons include the original owner of the motorbike used by Masud and his associate Alamgir Hossein on December 12 as well as Masud’s parents, wife and a ‘girlfriend’.
But questions swirl over Masud’s ‘arrest’ in November 2024. A photograph of Masud, flanked by two supposedly RAB men, appeared in Bengali daily Prothom Alo, with a sketchy report headlined, ‘Armed man arrested for looting BDT 17 lakh from Adabor school’.
The photograph, taken sometime in the evening, suggested that powerful lights were shone on the captors and the captive (Masud), with a vehicle marked RAB-2, behind them. The two men on either side of Masud, Bangladesh Police sources said, may not be RAB men at all. The two men flanking Masud in the photograph appear to have been ‘dressed up’ as RAB constables to stage an arrest.
Questions have also been raised on why a Jamaat-e-Islami advocate and the party’s electoral candidate, Shishir Monir, and BNP lawyer Kaisar Kamal moved Masud’s bail application in the High Court in February 2025.
ALSO READ: Bangladesh to hold student leader Sharif Osman Hadi’s funeral under tight security amid unrest
Today, multiple calls and messages on WhatsApp to the RAB-2 Commanding Officer, Major Monjurul Karim, did not elicit any response. However, a second-in-command officer did take Northeast News’ call on WhatsApp but was evasive on sharing basic information related to Masud’s arrest. He instead asked counter-questions and suddenly turned discourteous when Northeast News persisted with the questions.
