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Download PDF Three years into the August 21 grenade attack on an Awami League (AL) rally and its chief Sheikh Hasina, progress in the investigation still stands at the start line, thanks to the influence on it of the immediate past four-party alliance government.
The case now also stands as a glaring example of how governments’ top levels can manage to manipulate criminal investigations to meet their own political ends.
Less than a month into the attack, the then ruling BNP lawmakers in the parliament in presence of the erstwhile prime minister Khaleda Zia blamed AL for perpetrating the grisly attack on its own rally endangering the life of its own chief while leaving 24 killed and over 300 others maimed.
The government’s stance subsequently influenced the then investigators of the case enough to weave a story, involving a ward level AL leader and former ward commissioner of Maghbazar area in the capital, Mokhlesur Rahman. They attempted to feed the public the woven story through an ostensible confessional statement made by a petty criminal Joj Miah, in which he had named Mokhlesur as one of the planners of the attack.
Police officials, who had been tight-lipped about the case until the recent regime change bringing in the seat of power the current military backed caretaker government, are now saying that the erstwhile supervising officer of the case, criminal investigation department’s (CID) Special Superintendent Ruhul Amin, invented Joj Miah out of the blue to keep the real criminals out of the reach of the probe.
Joj’s very weakly woven statement drew media criticisms finally making it appear as blatantly meritless, and he himself turned out to be a creation of the police department’s well practiced imaginations, when his sister soon after his arrest divulged to the media that CID had been paying Joj Miah’s family Tk 2,500 a month for upkeep since the arrest.
Based on Joj Miah’s and two others’ statements, all of whom had made almost identical confessions, CID investigators even attempted to submit a charge sheet in the case, but the government held back following a media flak that had termed Joj Mia’s story very sketchy.
“Authenticity of the confessional statement made by Joj Miah is questionable as no other corroborative evidence was found supporting it,” Kaosar Ahmed Haydory, special superintendent of CID who is now supervising the case, told The Daily Star.
Since the ‘Joj Miah theory’ flopped, the investigation has been stalling, and 17 of the 20 suspects arrested in connection with the case were freed on bail. Joj Miah, Abul Hashem alias Rana, and Shafiqul Islam, who made the confessional statements, are the only ones still remaining behind bars.
The investigators arrested the 20 suspects in their pursuit of establishing a story that the blasts had been carried out by a criminal gang, as ‘confessed’ by Joj Miah and the other two in line with directions from currently detained and charged with a slew of criminal offences, former state minister for home Lutfozzaman Babar, who had acted as a liaison between the ‘criminal group’ and the once feared power house of Hawa Bhaban, said the CID sleuths.
Other arrestees were Monjur Hossain, Shah Alam, Haji Shoib alias Dicon, Moklesur Rahman, Aiub Ali Khan, Saibal Saha Partha, Habib alias Abdul Hannan, Badsha Mia, Abdur Rahman, Mohammad Hossain alias Tushar, Zahir Hossain alias Liton, Akhteruzaman alias Ata, Abdur Rahim, Waliullah alias Ali, Mohammad Hossain, Monir Hossain alias Pichchi Monir, and Akash Sarkar alias Jiten.
The new investigators are now focusing on a group of Afghan war veterans led by Mufti Abdul Hannan, presuming that they might have carried out the attack as they had hands in many other grenade attacks in the country. The investigators are now saying that in the last three years they did not have enough corroboration for the confessional statements made by Joj Miah and the other two.
The investigators are now also saying that their task of finding out the attackers have become more complicated as many necessary evidence required for a fair investigation are now almost impossible to collect after three years into the incident due to the ’shady’ start of the investigation.
An investigator seeking anonymity said three years after an incident it is extremely difficult to carry out an investigation starting anew. “As the previous investigation was not steered to a right direction, we have to investigate the case all over again from the very beginning,” he said.
The investigators said they are having a hard time in finding a direction for the investigation as the case had been prejudiced from the get go due to the shady track of probe followed over the years. Now to start the investigation afresh again it will take time, as it is a tedious time consuming process to scrap confessional statements in the legal maze.
Despite the caretaker government’s March 25 decision of marking the case as a sensitive one and of enlisting it with the home ministry’s monitoring cell for proper investigation and quick adjudication, the new investigators have yet to make any headway due to the mess left by the previous investigation team.
MILITANT LINK
“Now we are focusing our investigation on a group of Afghan war veterans led by Mufti Abdul Hannan presuming that they might have carried out the attack, as they had hands in many other grenade attacks in the country,” Kaosar Ahmed Haydory, special superintendent of CID, told The Daily Star.
The suspicion arose from Harkatul Jihad’s arrested militants’ confessions that the currently banned Islamist militant organisation had carried out grenade and bomb attacks on former finance minister and AL leader Shah AMS Kibria, British High Commissioner in Bangladesh Anwar Chowdhury, Sylhet City Corporration Mayor Badaruddin Ahmed Kamran, and an AL rally led by Suranjit Sengupta.
Besides, criminals usually leave marks of their attack patterns at a crime scene, said Haydory.
He however said they have yet to find any evidence connecting Mufti Hannan and other Afghan war veterans with the deadly August 21 attack.
QUESTIONS STILL UNANSWERED
Questions about who plotted the attack, what was the motive behind it, why were the evidence destroyed deliberately, and why two of the victims were buried hurriedly — remain still unresolved.
The immediate past elected government showed a brazen lack of interest in bringing to justice the perpetrators of the grisly attack, while the current caretaker government with its anti-crime posturing has yet to say why the law enforcers had totally failed to ensure security for the participants in the rally on that fateful evening and to arrest any of the perpetrators from the spot.
The Supreme Court Bar Association, which conducted its own inquiry into the attack, also blamed the immediate past elected government for destroying evidence.
CHARGES AGAINST ALLIANCE GOVT BIGWIGS MIGHT NOT STAND
The CID investigators said the complainant in the murder case filed against former premier Khaleda Zia, her son Tarique Rahman, Jamaat Chief Matiur Rahman Nizami, and 25 others in connection with the August 21 grenade attack seem to be lacking merit as the complainant could not provide any supporting evidence.
Haydory said it is mysterious why Badar Aziz filed the case. He said AL did not even support the charges Badar brought.
Badar’s statement was recorded as an eye witness account soon after the incident, but he did not bring the charges at the time. “His statement is confusing,” Haydory said.
Badar Aziz Uddin of Cox’s Bazar, filed the case with the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate’s Court of Dhaka, on June 5, 2007, after being injured in the August 21, 2004 blasts on the capital’s Bangabandhu Avenue
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