Shahjahan Bhuiya, who hanged some of Bangladesh’s most high-profile death row inmates in exchange for reductions in his own sentences for robbery and murder, and then briefly became a TikTok star after his release from prison, has died Monday in Dhaka, the country’s capital.
National police said Tuesday that the cause of death had not been confirmed, at a hospital. Abul Kashem, Bhuiya’s owner, said in an interview that he had taken Bhuiya to the hospital on Sunday after he complained of chest pains.
Last year, Bhuiya told local media that he was 74 years old. But according to his national identity card, provided by Kashem, he was 66 years old when he died.
According to media reports, Bhuiya was sentenced to 42 years in prison for robbery and murder in 1991, but was able to reduce his sentence by ten years thanks to his good behaviour and in exchange for hanging other inmates. He was released early by the authorities last year.
In a later published memoir titled “What the Life of an Executioner Was Like,” Bhuiya wrote that he had executed 60 inmates. Prison officials have said the correct number was 26.
In that book and in interviews, he methodically recounted some of the executions. Some of the victims were men who had shaped the country’s modern history, including military officers convicted of assassinating the country’s founder and first president, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, in 1975. Another was Siddiqul Islam, the leader of an Islamic militant group, who was convicted of involvement in the 2005 bombings.
He also executed two opposition leaders, Salahuddin Quader Chowdhury and Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mojaheed, who were convicted of war crimes committed during the 1971 war that resulted in Bangladesh’s independence from Pakistan, according to local police.
“Don’t let anyone take my photo,” Bhuiya quoted the Islamic group’s leader, Siddiqul Islam, as saying just before he was executed.
“I haven’t done anything wrong in my life,” said another death row inmate, Ershad Shikder, a politician convicted of murder, according to Bhuiya. “Pray for me.”
Bhuiya became a TikTok star after being released from prison. Her videos often featured sexually suggestive conversations with young women.
Mohammad Shahjahan Bhuiya was born on January 1, 1958, according to his identity card.
His hometown was a village in Narsingdi district in central Bangladesh, and he had three sisters, he wrote in his memoirs.
He enlisted in the Army but left when he was unable to complete the rigorous training program, he wrote. He later rose through the ranks of the Bangladesh Communist Party to become president of the Narsingdi district branch.
Information about his sentencing for robbery and murder was not immediately available. What is clear is that he was released, 10 years earlier, in June 2023.
At a later news conference, Mahbubul Islam, the jailer of Dhaka Central Jail, said Bhuiya’s sentence had been shortened partly because of his good behavior and partly because of the executions he had carried out. He received a two-month reduction for each execution, Islam said.
Prisoners can have their sentences reduced by up to a quarter for carrying out executions and performing other prison duties, Suvas Kumar Ghose, a senior prison official, said in an interview.
All executions in Bangladesh are carried out by long-serving prisoners who are selected by the authorities, said Juliette Rousselot, deputy director for Asia at the International Federation for Human Rights, a Paris-based advocacy group. In addition to reduced sentences, executioners can receive incentives such as better prison accommodations, she said.
Bangladesh sentences hundreds of prisoners to death each year; about 2,400 were on death row this year, according to the London-based advocacy group Amnesty International. But in any given year the country typically carries out only a handful of executions.
In addition to making TikTok videos, Bhuiya ran a tea stall, one of her sisters, Firoza Begum, said in an interview. She said she had had little contact with her family for decades and that her other siblings had died.
Mr. Bhuiya seemed indifferent to the executions he carried out, even expressing pride in executing politicians convicted of war crimes and military officers who had murdered the president.
He said at a news conference after his release that he couldn’t help but feel a little sorry every time he killed someone. But he added: “Even if I didn’t hang them, someone else would have.”
After three decades in prison, he felt like “a newborn baby from my mother’s womb,” he said. “My goal now is to live well.”
