Actress's body chopped in two pieces found beside bridge in Keraniganj
Actress Raima Islam Shimu. Collected photo.
"She left home saying she had a shoot at 7 AM, but never returned." With this single story, husband Sakhawat Ali Nobel kept the police and family confused for a full 24 hours.
But the next morning, the chilling truth was revealed as the plastic bag recovered from bushes near the Hazratpur Bridge in Keraniganj was opened. Inside lay the lifeless body of popular 1990s Dhallywood actress Raima Islam Shimu, severed into two pieces.
Who knew that Shimu, a once-familiar face on the silver screen, would be so brutally extinguished within her own home?
Thanks to a recent report by NDTV, this high-profile 2022 murder has once again come into the spotlight.
After the body of the missing actress Shimu was recovered in a bag on January 16, 2022, police initially interrogated actor Jayed Khan, centering on conflicts within the Bangladesh Film Artists' Association. However, that lead did not yield any results.
The investigation then turned towards Shimu and Nobel's personal car. While searching the vehicle, police detected a strong smell of bleaching powder—which was primarily used to erase evidence and bloodstains. Additionally, investigators found that a nylon rope recovered from inside the car matched exactly the rope used to tie the body. The car became the biggest piece of evidence in this murder case.
Under intense police interrogation, husband Nobel broke down and confessed. Although he claimed Shimu left for a shoot at 7 AM on Sunday, January 16, in reality, a heated argument broke out between the couple at that time. During the altercation, Nobel beat Shimu mercilessly and strangled her to death.
After the murder, Nobel called his friend Farhad over. To destroy the evidence, they sent the maid out to buy snacks and then cut Shimu's body into two pieces, sewing them into a plastic bag.
Their first attempt to dispose of the body in the afternoon failed, but around 9 PM, they dumped the bag near the isolated Hazratpur Bridge in Keraniganj. The very next morning, in a highly dramatic move, Nobel went to the Kalabagan police station himself and filed a General Diary (GD) reporting his wife missing!
Although Shimu and Nobel married for love in 2004, their household was never a happy one. Plagued by mental depression and extreme suspicion, Nobel frequently subjected Shimu to physical abuse.
When Nobel's business collapsed during the COVID-19 pandemic, Shimu became the sole earner of the family, which deeply wounded Nobel's patriarchal ego. Just months before this brutal murder, Shimu had filed a complaint of domestic violence against her husband at the police station.
After the murder, while in police custody, the killer father, Nobel, called his young daughter, Ozia Alim Hrid, and asked for her forgiveness for killing her mother.
Shimu made her debut in 1998 with Kazi Hayat's film "Bortoman" and had acted in around 25 films and over 50 dramas. Such a tragic end to a promising actress's glamorous life still leaves the entertainment world in shock to this day.
