The evening of October 2, 2001, around the time the Begum Khaleda Zia-led Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) was about to take power, was the last time that 11-year-old Esha and nine-year-old Sadnaan Jahan saw their parents alive.
It was around 11 PM, and Sadnaan had returned home with his parents, Zahirul Islam Jahan and Ayesha Afsari, from a party.
The family lived in Dhaka’s Neelkhet-Babupura neighbourhood, just across the road from New Market. The Jahans’ house was on the second floor of BCS Colony’s Tripti Bhaban.
A Bangladesh Civil Service officer (administration cadre), Ayesha was attached to the then Chief Advisor Justice (retd) Latifur Rahman’s office as protocol officer.
After the chauffeur-driven car reached the building, Ayesha and Sadnaan went straight to their second-floor apartment, while Zahirul Islam walked a few paces across in the neighbourhood to fetch cigarettes from a street vendor. He returned to the apartment about 20 minutes later.
This was corroborated later by the Jahans’ domestic help Noorjehan who also heard Ayesha ask Zahirul Islam why it took him so late to come upstairs. Zahirul responded curtly, saying that he had gone over to the vendor to buy some cigarettes.
But this soon developed into a quarrel with an angry Zahirul taking to hit Ayesha. He punched her so hard that she flew to land on the bed.
Shouting and screaming in rage, Zahirul pulled out a rifle from behind the bedroom door and fired at point blank range, the bullet hitting Ayesha in her belly.
Sadnaan threw himself at his father’s feet and begged him to spare his mother’s life.
But Zahirul paid no attention to his son’s entreaties. He slapped him and told him to shut up. All this while, Esha, who was physically challenged, was in her room.
But Zahirul would not calm down. Meanwhile, grievously injured Ayesha desperately tried to use the landline phone to call up the office of Latifur Rahman.
Zahirul Islam, still raging in anger, pulled and tore off the landline phone cord even as he screamed invectives at Ayesha. He then raised his rifle and fired a second time at Ayesha. This time the bullet hit her head.
Apoplectic with uncontrolled anger, Zahirul jumped around the room and broke the butt of the rifle before he turned the muzzle at himself and pulled the trigger.
The floor of the room soon turned into a pool of blood. Stunned for a few minutes by the fast-paced events, both Noorjehan and Sadnaan went to the verandah and began screaming at the top of their voices.
As neighbours gathered, the building’s security guard Khalilur Rahman later told reporters he last saw Zahirul walk over to buy cigarettes.
And then, a few minutes later, he heard shots ring out from the Jahans’ apartment.
Later, an ambulance took away Ayesha and Zahirul’s bodies to a local hospital. In the morning (October 3), senior police officers and bureaucrats from Chief Advisor Latifur Rahman’s office reached the flat.
The above is the account of the incident as reported by the Bengali daily Prothom Alo (October 4, 2001 edition).
The report did shed light on the fact that both Zahirul and Ayesha hailed from Mogbaria-Choumuhuni area of Comilla city.
Northeast News had earlier reported that Ayesha Afsari was shot by Zahirul for her alleged insistence on leaving for a government posting to New York, which had been allegedly “managed” at the insistence of Khalilur Rahman (appointed by the Mohammad Yunus-led interim government as Bangladesh’s National Security Advisor on April 9) who then briefly worked as Latifur Rahman’s private secretary.
At that time, Khalilur Rahman, a relative of Latifur Rahman, worked with the World Trade Organization in Geneva.
He was brought back to Dhaka where he joined Latifur Rahman’s office as a deputy secretary but was promoted to joint secretary within hours of assuming office.
Khalilur Rahman, who now holds two positions in the Yunus-led interim dispensation – as the NSA and the High Representative to the High Representative of the Chief Adviser on the Rohingya Problem and Priority Issues – was alleged to have developed a “special relationship” with Ayesha and had tried to do her a favour by “setting up” a posting in New York.
Northeast News had reported earlier that Latifur Rahman had strongly insisted that Khalilur Rahman immediately leave Bangladesh, so he did not have to face any police investigation.
Local newspapers had reported on October 4, 2001, that a post-mortem was performed on Ayesha and Zahirul Islam’s bodies.
However, the case was not investigated properly as there was alleged undue pressure from Latifur Rahman’s office on the police to close the probe.
Meanwhile, Khalilur Rahman has not reacted to media reports of the 24-year-old suicide-and-murder and his alleged links with Ayesha Afsari.
