Family seeks repatriation of body of Bangladesh leader found dead in India. Cause of death a mystery

Guwahati: After the body of a leader of former Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League party was recovered Monday evening in Meghalaya near the Bangladesh border, reports have emerged of family members requesting Indian authorities to facilitate the repatriation of the body. According to Bangladesh media reports, an application has been submitted to the Bangladesh Deputy High Commission in Shillong.

The body of the deceased, identified as Ishaque Ali Khan Panna, was recovered on 26 August from a betel nut plantation in the Dona Bhoi area under the Umkiang police station, police said through a press release Wednesday. The location is about 1.5 km inside the India-Bangladesh border in East Jaintia Hills district, sharing boundary with Bangladesh’s Sylhet in the south.

Superintendent of Police, Giri Prasad told ThePrint, “Government of Meghalaya is taking steps for handing over the body to relatives, if any.” Dhaka Tribune had reported that Zafar Ali Khan, Panna’s elder brother, has applied to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to repatriate his body from India.

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Meanwhile, conflicting reports have emerged about what he was doing in Indian territory and how he died.

Local residents in the Dona Bhoi area of Jaintia Hills found Panna’s body in a “semi-decomposed” state at the betel nut plantation and informed the police. The identity of the Awami League leader was established through a Bangladesh passport recovered from the body.

“After observing all the formalities at the police outpost, the body was shifted to Civil Hospital Khliehriat for post-mortem examination,” the police statement read.

On completion of the post-mortem, the body was taken to the hospital morgue. While police told ThePrint that the details of the report will be shared “after further investigation”, Meghalaya’s regional media outlet, Hub News, reported that the autopsy revealed that Panna was “throttled to death”.

It has also been speculated that Panna supposedly died from a “heart attack while crossing a mountain in the Dawki area of Meghalaya early Saturday morning”. Some reports, as Dhaka Tribune suggested, said that he might have died “while being chased by the BSF (Border Security Force)”.

However, a statement issued by BSF spokesperson Trideep Sangma on 26 August read, “No infiltration/illegal entry of Bangladeshi nationals was reported in the area of responsibility of the Meghalaya Frontier of BSF along the Indo-BD (Bangladesh) border.”

“The story being circulated is entirely fabricated, and BSF has no involvement in the unfortunate demise of Panna,” it added.

ThePrint reached out to the BSF Commandant 172 Battalion, Vinod Kumar Thapliyal for more details, but was refused any information regarding the incident. 

Bangladesh media also reported sources in Panna’s family saying that he had been in hiding in Dhaka following the fall of Hasina’s government, and had later attempted to escape to India via Sylhet.

According to a Hub News report, BSF sources told the media outlet that “as per their intel, Panna was killed in Donna Cherra village, by either the Bangladesh Border Guards (BGB) or the villagers.”

It was also reported that Panna was carrying a huge amount of cash, though Meghalaya police denied recovering any money from his remains.

Panna was the former general secretary of Bangladesh Chhatra League, and later became a member of the Awami League in Pirojpur district. In 2014, the party nominated him for the Pirojpur-2 constituency, but he was forced to withdraw due to the coalition agreement of the 14-party alliance.

(Edited by Mannat Chugh)

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