'They made me listen as they tortured him': The tale of a mother-son duo who braved the July atrocities

Omar Sharif Mohammad Imran and his mother Shamima Barkat Lucky recounted their ordeal. Photo: Miraz Hossain

It was around 2.30 am on 28 July. Shamima Barkat Lucky had just finished her Tahajjud. She tried to calm her restless mind, but sleep wouldn't come. Thoughts of her eldest son, Omar Sharif Mohammad Imran, known as Saniat, locked away in police custody, gnawed at her. 

Suddenly, her phone rang—a four-digit number flashed on the screen. She hesitated, then answered.

"Hello, who is this?" There was no reply, just the distant sound of groaning. Her heart froze. It was her son's voice, raw and pained, crying out "O maaaa!" as he was mercilessly beaten. 

The helplessness hit her like a punch to the gut. "It was Saniat," she recalls, her voice cracking. "They made me listen as they tortured him. How could they do this? How could I endure hearing my son suffer like that? My son had never gone to jail before, let alone be beaten inhumanely."

Desperation gripped her as she screamed his name into the phone, pleading for them to stop, but her cries were met only by silence. The line went dead, leaving her in the dark, alone with the echoes of her son's agony. She wept through the night, grief and rage coursing through her veins as she sat on the blue sofa of her Bashundhara R/A residence.

"They punished him especially because a video of us had gone viral," she explained, her eyes distant.

The video shows Saniat, handcuffed, just stepping out of the court when his mother rushes up behind him. Surprised, Saniat tries to greet her with his cuffed hands, and she comforts him, cheering him on. 

The whole police department was furious at that video showing Saniat's mother assuring her son, giving him courage, saying "Don't you worry, don't you worry".

As his mother was speaking to us, Saniat sat beside her, but he was lost in his own thoughts. He could still feel the sharp sting of the bruises, each ache reminding him of how he was hung upside down and beaten relentlessly. 

On 24 July, Saniat, an MBA graduate from American International University Bangladesh, was taken by DB police, allegedly for arson and vandalism, and held until the Hasina regime fell. Each day felt like a lifetime; every moment was a battle with the shadows that lingered long after most of the bruises faded– some still exist.

A slice of pastry

It was midnight. Saniat's mother was at the hospital, and his father, Barkat Ullah Bulu, a prominent politician affiliated with the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), was attending to her there. His second brother, Samir Mohammad Ifran, has down syndrome and he wanted to have pastry late at night.  

"People with his condition sometimes make demands that have to be fulfilled, or they get extremely upset," said Saniat. To appease his brother, he went out around one in the morning to buy a pastry. He found an open shop near North South University, called Wooden Spoon. 

As soon as he stepped out with the cake, a group of officers wearing DB jackets surrounded him. A large HiAce van stood with its doors open, flanked by several other cars. Two automatic guns were pointed at him. They came right up and asked, "What's your name?"

"Omar Sharif Mohammad Imran," he replied.

"What's the other name?" they asked again.

"Saniat," he said.

One of them landed a hard blow on his neck and shouted, "Sir, we've got him!" They shoved him into the car.

Then, the interrogation began. They asked why he was there, what he was doing, why he bought a cake so late at night. They asked about his parents, especially his father, who is a politician. Saniat told them that his  mother was in the hospital, and his father was attending to her. 

To prove Saniat was telling the truth, he suggested they accompany him to the hospital. His main fear was for his second brother; as there would be no one to handle him.

When they reached the hospital, they left Saniat in the car while a group went inside to look for his father who was not there. Since they did not have a female police officer, the nurses did not allow them to enter his mother's cabin.

"The nurses told me later that some people were asking for Saniat's father," Lucky recalled. "I asked them why they hadn't informed me sooner. I was losing my mind, desperate to know what was happening."

Screengrab from the viral video

BNP connection

The next day, since it was a curfew and she was not fully well, she took an ambulance and looked for her son. But she was refused any information by all neighbouring thanas and the DB office. 

"I had been taken to a room where over 70 others were detained, including many leaders and supporters of the BNP," said Saniat.

Later, Saniat was taken in for interrogation. They blindfolded him, led him up and down different floors of the building, and finally into a room. They began beating him around the lower part of his body, demanding to know about his connections or correspondence. 

They questioned why he didn't know his father's whereabouts and accused him of having daily correspondence with Tarique Rahman, the BNP acting chairman, orchestrating the movement and carrying out vandalism.

"The main point of their interrogation was that from Rampura and Uttara, SM Jagangir and I were orchestrating the whole mess. And on the Metro Rail vandalism, I was apparently the mastermind," said Saniat. "These are false accusations."

After a relentless session, they gave him a break and returned him to his cell. Some inmates in the cell had Napa Extend, a painkiller. "If you only knew how valuable a painkiller is there! You cannot imagine," Saniat recalls. 

In the meantime, after searching for her son everywhere else, Saniat's mother went to Dhaka Medical College Hospital. But she couldn't find him there either. 

Someone told her, "There are some over this way; you might find him there too." Then he took Lucky to the morgue. When she saw all those bodies, and thought that her son could be among them, she fainted.

"Once I regained consciousness, I decided to continue my search at the court," Lucky said. 

That day, Saniat was brought to court and placed under a five-day remand. It was there that he saw his mother. "When I spotted my son from afar, I pushed through the crowd and police who were trying to keep me away," she said. "I patted him and told him not to worry. Someone had probably taken a video of what happened. It went viral two or three days later."

Five days of relentless torture

While the first day of remand was relatively lenient, the torture became unbearable from the second day. The lower part of his body was swollen and bruised. 

"If you spoke, you got beaten more. The only way to survive was to lie there and endure the beating," Saniat said. One of the officers even mocked him, saying, "Don't you know you're supposed to act like it hurts more than it does?" 

On day three, the violence escalated. "Your photos and videos have gone viral. Your reputation is ruined now," one officer sneered. "There's nothing we can do for you anymore." They concocted more false accusations. 

They even tried using pliers on his nails. "Look, this nail still has some bruising," Saniat told us, showing the injury.

When he asked for water, instead of helping, the officers made him walk around with two others holding him, as punishment. The interrogations resumed this time about photos of political leaders on his phone. At one point, they started kicking his ankles. 

Day four was all about the video. Someone said, "The sirs are furious about the video." When Saniat asked, "What video?" he got no answer—just more beatings. "Harun sir has a lot planned for you. You'll be here for a long time," they taunted.

As Saniat was being taken back to his cell, he saw then-DB Chief Harun. Harun noticed him too, but Saniat's ability to still walk seemed to displease him. Around 2.30 am, Saniat was called in again. They hung him upside down. He already had issues with his waist, which caused him great pain, but they launched into another barrage of beatings.

"I wished I could die rather than endure that," Saniat recalled. 

On day five, three senior leaders and Saniat were lined up, and the police were beating them one by one, keeping others as witnesses. "Everyone was beaten, but I did not understand why I was beaten this much. In five days, I was  beaten for a minimum of 16-17 hours, and hung upside down twice." 

On day six, he was prepared for court. Her mother also went to the court premises at dawn and waited for Saniat to show up.

"My mother was acting mad, shouting things like 'I heard that they beat my son' and so on," said Saniat. "I thought my remand was over and I would be sent to jail. But no, they were not yet ready to leave me." 

When he was brought to court, they accused him of involvement in vandalising the Metro Rail and alleged foreign funding connections, claiming he had received money from abroad. They labelled him as the mastermind behind the metro rail vandalism and accused him of carrying out a "special mission" under instructions from Tarique Rahman to attack the Prime Minister's achievements. They requested an additional five-day remand to extract more information. 

Standing on the court docket, Saniat felt a deep sadness for himself. "In the past five days, I've gone through so much. If they put me on remand again, I don't know what will happen to me," he said and turned to his mother, "Maa, I was never able to do anything for you. Please forgive me."