Bangladeshi investigators have concluded that the 30-year old Motswana woman currently awaiting trial in a Dhaka prison was not in the country to conduct legal business. That conclusion is critical and prejudicial to the explanation that Lesedi Molapisi has given about drugs that were found in her luggage as she cleared customs.
As reported in a Bangladesh newspaper called Daily Star, Molapisi’s story is that the bags containing the drugs belonged to a friend of hers called Evans Chukaka. The latter reportedly lives (or lived) in Johannesburg, South Africa at a residential address investigators have been unable to locate.
When Molapisi left for Bangladesh via Doha, Chukaka reportedly gave her three bags. Upon arrival at the Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport on January 23 last year police found over 3.146kg of heroin concealed in her luggage. She was arrested and is awaiting trial in a Dhaka jail. Her last mention was on November 14, 2022 but 10 days later, a notorious Facebook page claimed that she had already been executed. The page based its claim on unattributed “unconfirmed reports.”
The determination about Molapisi having no legitimate business is expressed in a charge sheet filed before a Dhaka court. What her own father, Goitsemodimo Molapisi, a civil servants based in Shakawe, said in an interview with SABC television helps close some information gaps in the charge sheet. The father revealed that upon searching her things after the arrest, he found a letter written by someone called Amir Hossain, a senior consultant at a company called PMT Tours. The letter, which he read out loud on SABC, was an application to the Bangladesh High Commission in Pretoria, South Africa for a business visa. In it, Hossain says that Molapisi wanted to buy ready-made garments in Bangladesh, that he (Hossain) would arrange for her accommodation and that she would conduct herself appropriately while in the country.
Going back at least a decade now, Batswana women buy bales of second-hand clothes abroad, mostly in Asian countries and sell them back home. Bangladesh is indeed on the list of such countries. While most order through agents, a few travel abroad to buy the bales. That is the scenario that has been presented in Molapisi’s case. However, it is unclear from the charge sheet whether she went to Bangladesh for purposes of buying second-hand clothing. Her story is that she did so at the invitation a man called Mohibul Islam Masud, who is the Managing Director of a Dhaka-based company called Mehrab Industries Limited. Whatever the case, the charge sheet shows that prosecutors don’t believe her story.
“Masud invited Molapisi to come to Bangladesh for business purposes but she could not show any suitable evidence in favour of her business,” reads a charge sheet prepared by Sub-Inspector Mohammad Jahamgir Alam, an investigation officer at the Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport Police Station.
This particular point, which summarises an eight-month investigation, will be elaborated when trial starts at the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Court in Dhaka.
Molapisi may have thought that she was walking into an international airport but was actually walking into a highly-charged geo-political situation – and she visited Bangladesh four years too late.
On account of its geographic location between three drug production and trafficking routes, Bangladesh is a target for both producers and traffickers. Resultantly, the country has an acute drug addiction problem. In 2020, the approximate number of drug users in Bangladesh was 7.5 million, among whom 65 percent were youth, some as young as 15. In 2018, Bangladeshi law was tightened to make producing, smuggling, distributing and using more than 5 grams of certain types of drugs punishable by death. The 3kg that Molapisi was caught with put her way over that threshold. While her trial has yet to start, there is understanding that the outcome of her misadventure could be a grim one.
Bangladesh is also the temporary home to Rohingya refugees who have fled persecution by the Myanmar government. The refugee camps have themselves become hotbeds of all sorts of criminal activity, from gun-running to human trafficking to ransom-kidnapping to gold and drug-smuggling. That means that in addition to the drug abuse that is fraying the societal fabric, Bangladesh is also dealing with an even more serious national-security emergency.
As early as 2020, the Department of Narcotics Control had determined that a transnational syndicate was using Bangladesh as a smuggling route for drugs. This determination triggered appropriate response and so when Molapisi strolled into the terminal, the police were on high alert. “Transnational” involves foreign actors and as a foreigner who also stood out on account of her skin colour, Molapisi would have been high on the suspect list.
Last November, there was a false but widely reported story that she was either about to be executed or had already been executed – which would certainly have traumatised her family back home in Botswana. As a matter of fact, her father told SABC as much.
It has since emerged that the trial hasn’t even started. Bangladesh has a relatively free press – which reported her arrest and at least on that basis, would also be able to cover the trial. Daily Star quoted the Deputy Commissioner of Customs. As the rest of Bangladesh, the paper was surprised that “African media” was reporting that Molapisi faced execution even before she was tried. It carried that story with a headline that read: “Executed before trial even began!” The hat read: “African media incorrectly state woman held with narcotics in Bangladesh faces execution.”
An online publication in Zimbabwe even posted a macabre 3-D video of how she would have been executed. However, the method of execution that it described (a firing squad) is not the one provided for in the Bangladesh’s Code of Criminal Procedure which says that a condemned person shall be hanged.
On the whole, the reporting itself appeared suspicious because it was from dubious online sources. The story was picked up by more credible outlets but even they didn’t seem to have accurate information – they merely reproduced what had been reported earlier.
The traction the story gained caused enough panic domestically for Ditshwanelo, Botswana’s premier human-rights organisation, to put out a press statement. In the statement, Ditshwanelo said that it has taken “serious note” of media reports about Molapisi’s impending execution.
“Ditshwanelo is in the process of communicating with the Government of Botswana on this matter as we verify the facts surrounding the media reports concerning Ms. Lesedi Molapisi. Due to the secrecy which surrounds the death penalty in Bangladesh, information about an execution is made public after the execution has already been conducted. This is also the case in Botswana,” the statement read.
A Facebook page (France Museveni) that some believe is administered by operatives of the Directorate of Intelligence Services saved the day by asserting that the story of Molapisi’s execution was just a sick social-media hoax.
“News circulating around suggesting that Lesedi has been executed are lies and misleading.
The news emanates from the usual fake news desk. I called all my contacts there and they said that it’s all lies and that there is no verdict to that effect. I’m told she misses home though. Lets pray for her, I would like to warn young ladies that money is evil. Don’t be enticed by such as it can destroy lifes and a bright future. Most of the “good” life people try to portray on social media is fake and not a true reflection of the real individual.”
Daily Star reports that Molapisi is represented by a Bangladeshi lawyer called Chamon Afroza. This would the lawyer whose services were obtained through an association of Africans living in Bangladesh as Molapisi’s father told SABC.
