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Download PDF Although investigators confirmed the information about former deputy minister Abdus Salam Pintu’s involvement in the August 21 grenade attacks, they are also trying to trace if more influential people had also been among the masterminds of the attacks.
“We arrested him based on confirmed information about his role in the attacks and shown him arrested in the case,” said an investigator wishing anonymity. “We’re now trying to find out the masterminds by interrogating him intensively,” he added.
A high level Criminal Investigation Department (CID) official told The Daily Star yesterday if their probe finds any link between the attacks and the people of Hawa Bhaban or any other big wig then they will take measures to bring them to book in connection with the case.
Investigators are quizzing Pintu at a Task Force for Interrogation (TFI) cell taking him on a three-day remand in connection with the August 21, 2004 grenade attacks on an Awami League (AL) rally on Bangabandhu Avenue in the capital, which left 24 AL leaders and activists killed and scores injured.
Although, Pintu is a lower tier central leader of BNP and a former deputy minister, he was nonetheless very influential as he had good relations with Hawa Bhaban, known as the alternative powerhouse during the immediate past elected government’s regime, and with the powerful people of the much feared building including Tarique Rahman and former state minister for home Lutfozzaman Babar.
Law enforcers arrested Pintu 14 days after he had been picked up on January 3 from Gulshan in the capital by an intelligence agency based on confirmed information on his role in the attacks. He was kept in an unknown place for two days after he had been picked up.
Pintu has been repeatedly denying his involvement in the August 21 attacks, although detained operations commander of now banned Harkatul Jihad Al Islami (Huji) Mufti Abdul Hannan in his recent confessional statement said the attacks had been planned in Pintu’s Dhanmondi residence.
Besides, Pintu’s brother Moulana Tajuddin allegedly supplied from Pakistan the grenades used in the blasts. Tajuddin, who is now hiding abroad and was allegedly involved in Pakistan based Islamist militant organisation Lashkar-e-Tayaba, was also living there at the time.
Sources said since Pintu had links with Hawabhaban, the investigators are examining whether the influential people of Hawa Bhaban had any role behind the attacks on the AL rally.
As the investigators have yet to unearth fully, who plotted the attack, what was the motive behind it, and why the evidence were destroyed deliberately — they are quizzing Pintu to get answers.
Babar was at the helm of the home ministry when the erstwhile investigators of the case wove a story implicating a ward level AL leader, and a 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.
Sources also said Babar held repeated meetings with investigators and directed the erstwhile additional inspector general of CID to submit a charge sheet based on the confessional statement of Joj Miah, who had been invented out of the blue by the then supervising officer of the case, CID’s erstwhile special superintendent Ruhul Amin.
The sources said investigators are also cross checking the information gleaned from Pintu and seven other detained Huji leaders. The seven are Hannan’s brother Mohibullah alias Mofizur Rahman, Sharif Shahidul Alam, Abu Sayeed alias Doctor Zafar, Abul Kalam Azad, Jahangir Alam, Mosaddek Billah, and Halim, all of whom already made confessional statements.
The sources also said if needed, the seven will be produced before Pintu in the TFI cell to cross check his statements.
A total of 29 people including Pintu were arrested in connection with the case, 20 of whom are now out on bail.
During the immediate past rule of BNP-Jamaat alliance government the investigators arrested some suspects including Shaibal Shaha Partha, and kept them in custody for quite a long time, allegedly torturing them severely in custody so that they would make statements before the court implicating themselves.
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