Slain customs officer’s wife search for answers

As the coffin of assistant revenue officer Bullet Bairagi arrived at his ancestral home in Gopalganj’s Tungipara, his wife Urmi Hira did not join the loud lamentations of the neighbours.

Instead, she stood in a state of stunned silence on Sunday, haunted by a single, agonising question.
“I just want to know what happened to him on Friday night,” she said.

For Urmi, the tragedy is not just the loss of her husband, but the void of information regarding his final hours.

While the village of Babupara mourned a “brilliant son” and a “pride of the school”, Urmi was left grappling with the fragments of a journey that ended on the shoulder of the Dhaka-Chattogram Highway, reports bdnews24.com.

The timing of the tragedy adds a layer of cruelty to Urmi’s search for the truth.

Bullet, a 41st BCS officer posted at Cumilla’s Bibir Bazar Land Port, had gone to Chattogram for a workshop.

He was rushing back on a late-night bus Friday for one reason: their son’s first birthday, which is on Monday.

“He told me he would celebrate his birthday and then head back to Chattogram,” Urmi recalled.

Bullet had boarded a bus from Chattogram’s Alankar Mor at 11pm.

During their last conversation at 2:25am, he mentioned he was near Tomson Bridge in Cumilla.
His mother Nilima Bairagi noted a chilling detail that she is now forced to confront: the voice on the phone during that final call didn’t sound like Bullet’s.

When his body was found the next morning in Kotbari, the physical evidence suggested a violent struggle.

Relatives pointed to broken teeth and facial trauma so severe that he was barely recognisable — signs that Urmi believes point to something far more sinister than a routine mugging.

While RAB-11 has detained five suspected “professional muggers” for questioning, the official explanation has yet to satisfy a wife who lost her partner four years and three months into their marriage.

As the lone child of his parents, Bullet was the pillar of the family.

Family members now seek the truth behind the “brutality” described by witnesses.

“Bullet never hurt a soul, still ended up dead on the side of a road when he was supposed to be home with his son,” said his uncle Bimol Bariagi.

The victim’s cousin Bristy Bairagi spoke of the sheer brutality of the attack, claiming that Bullet’s face had been disfigured beyond recognition.

“My brother was murdered so ruthlessly that his face cannot be identified anymore. His teeth were shattered,” she said.