Travesty of a judicial probe

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Due to lack of substance, the judicial probe report into the heinous grenade attack on the Awami League rally in which 22 were killed and 200 injured on August 21, 2004, has failed to generate any follow up actions of the government against the culprits.

Instead of casting light on the terror attack the comment of the one member probe committee of Justice Joynul Abedin created unnecessary confusion.

Abedin’s biggest finding was “a link to foreign enemies apart from local ones” in the terror attack. Other investigators in the last three years, however, did not find any evidence that supports this kind of conclusion.

The Justice Abedin probe committee was set up on August 22, 2004 and within just 40 days on October 3 he submitted a 162-page report to the Ministry of Home Affairs.

Before submitting the report in such a short time, he told The Daily Star, “I am now hopeful that the enquiry commission would be able to reach a decision on the carnage with the information and data that are on hand.”

Even though in that report he drew a conclusion about a foreign link, a home ministry high official said, “The report was not at all conclusive. It was shallow. The government had a look into it, but as it lacked substance, there was nothing to work on.”

During that time the probe report generated public interest. Yet, the investigators of the case are not aware of the contents of that report. The government also never shared the report with them.

Criminal Investigation Department (CID) Special Superintendent of Police Kaosar Ahmed Haydory, who is supervising the August 21 case investigation, says, “We never saw the report. The government did not inform us about it.”

When asked if the investigators in the last three years found anything to suggest foreign links with the attack, Ahmed says, “Till now we found no evidence of foreign links. We did not even find any hint of involvement of the Ulfa [United Liberation Front of Assam, India].”

The name of Ulfa popped up in press reports in connection with the attack earlier this year. The press reports were based on news generated in India.

Even though Justice Abedin drew his conclusion within 40 days, the CID high official, three years after the incident, says the investigators have not yet succeeded in gathering enough evidence to submit the charge sheet. “We suspect a militants link. Our investigation is now directed to find if they were involved,” he noted.

A former investigator, serving in the defence, explained why the judicial probe could not help anyone. “A one-member probe committee is a weak idea,” the former investigator says on condition of anonymity. “Being alone, the investigator is afraid of pressure from all sides. That is why one member committees tend to play safe by submitting a sketchy report,” the former investigator added.

A home ministry high official seconds this view, “A judge cannot carry out such an investigation in such a short time. The August 21 incident left few pieces of evidence. Due to lack of evidence, the inquiry could not go deep.”

The official added that immediately after the incident unknown people deliberately destroyed evidence, some was destroyed naturally.

A former judge of the Supreme Court who headed another probe committee of a terror incident, wishing not to be named, said, “These are such big incidents that it is very hard to gather the whole picture and draw conclusion. This is the job for criminal investigators. What we generally do in case of such investigation is that we make some recommendations to the government about how to prevent such incidents in future and what should be done immediately after such an incident.”

The ex-judge pointed out that even though in his investigation, he made several recommendations but to his knowledge the government implemented none of them.

In the past, whenever there had been such heinous incidents the government had formed such judicial probe committees. None of the reports of these committees were made public. Nobody again is aware if any of the recommendations made in these reports were implemented.

Some of the judicial probe reports, as was found by the press, were highly politically biased. For instance, under the four-party alliance government regime reports of the three-member probe committee, led by Justice Abdul Bari Sarkar, on seven major bomb attacks including the Udichi blast were more political statements than probe reports.

Joynul Abedin, now a Supreme Court judge, had reported, “The incident is a naked attack on the independence and sovereignty of the country… The two major political parties should work only for national interests, brushing aside all differences so that the local and foreign enemies cannot create anarchy in the country.”

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