21 August: a black day for Bangladesh politics

| by Swadesh Roy

( August 23, 2012, Dhaka, Sri Lanka Guardian) 21 august of 2004 was a black day for Bangladesh politics. In a broad daylight, a rally of a political party was attacked by a group of people who attempt to murder the then opposition leader and the former Prime Minister Sheik Hasina. They used grenades to attack. The then opposition leader and former Prime Minister survived due to the sacrifice of her workers and leaders.

As a journalist, I rushed there with in fifteen minutes. One of the victims of that incident called me from there by his cell phone and told me that, the rally of Sheik Hasina was attacked by a huge number of arms and a lot of people had died, he was not sure whether Sheik Hasina was alive or not. He urged me to send as much ambulance as possible to the spot. Immediately I called my college Mr. Ali Habib of Janakantha to contact with the authority of fire brigade and other hospitals for ambulances and I had tried to rush there as quickly as possible.

However, I reached there with in fifteen minutes. After reaching there I became astonished because police did not cordon the area rather police were shelling tear gas on the wounded people of the rally. To some extent, it became difficult for me to reach the exact place of the incident due to the shelling of tear gas; but it was very known place to me, I knew all the corridors of that place so I succeed to reach there.

As I reached there, I got a group of people who were witnessed; they told me that, in the mean time police had destroyed all the evidences of the incident intentionally. Some of the witnessed told me that, they had seen police had taken away a lot of dead bodies through the police van. One of the witnessed told me that police had taken away more than thirty dead bodies.

Then I went to a police officer and introduce myself and showed my identity card and asked him why they had used tear gas here instead of cordoning the place. He did miss behave with me and forced me to leave the place. Then I used another corridor of a market and reached nearer to the place and found another witnessed. He told me, he had seen two people were shooting by guns to target Sheik Hasina when she was escaping the place through her car. As her car was bullet proof, so she had managed to survive but one of his body guards had to sacrifice his life.

The incident happened in front of the office of Awami League. It is the busiest area of Dhaka city. There are two big markets on two sides of the road. It is near the main commercial area of Dhaka city, so it is too difficult to make this type of incident in a broad day light and especially on a mass rally. I was in those market about half an hour . I was searching for more witness and got some, some of them told me that, they had seen some yellow taxi cabs were ready near the place of the incident which is known as Golap Shaha Mazar; and after blasting the grenades more then ten people escaped by these yellow taxi cabs.

A few days latter a newspaper of Bangladesh published news that, those yellow cabs went to a house in Dhanmandi, the residential area of Dhaka. Later the newspaper also published news that, on that day some ticket of Dhaka -Chittagong airlines were canceled and the authority of the air lines managed to abroad some new passengers for Chittagong. That newspaper also published that, those people went to Thailand by Phuket Air from Chittagong to Changmai of Thailand.

After that incident; the then fundamentalist Jammat- BNP government formed a one member judiciary committee to find out the cause of the incident. Justice Joynul Abedin was the chief of that one member judicial inquiry committee. He gave a report which was totally base less but and then the entire senior advocates of the bar council made a committee to inquiry the incident. They found that, the incident was preplanned and its goal was to kill Sheik Hasina. They also revealed the findings that, police along with the government had assisted it. At that time the ex army chief General Mustafizur Rahaman wrote an article in a newspaper that, the grenades which were used in the operation could only be operated by professionals. Those who used it were trained by army personnel. So some of the military experts at that time told that, ‘there are two groups in our country that are trained by the army personnel; one is united liberation front of Assam (ULFA) another is Taliban who fought in Afghanistan in favor of Taliban.’

Now the 21August grenade attacked case is under trial and the confession of Mufti Hannan has opened some boxes. He admitted that, the then home minister was informed about it. Beside that, the main accused is one of the state ministers of the then government and it was known to the highest authority of the then government. In addition of that, they had used ULFA and Islamic Militant and their goal was to kill Sheik Hasina. Their confession reveals that, the ULFA, the Islamic Militant group of Bangladesh and the BNP all considered Hasina as their only threat. So they went to kill Sheik Hasina.

After coming to power the then care taker government started the trial of the case. The present government is continuing it. But the speed of the case is saying that, it will not be completed in this tenure of the government. However, a part of the government is trying to delay trial .We know that justice delayed is justice denied. However the conspiracy of assassination of an opposition leader and a former Prime Minister who is now also Prime Minister. If this conspiracy escapes from the justice system then it will be impossible to establish justice in the country. That is why; Bangladesh has to come out from that black day of that dirty politics.