BDR MUTINY INVESTIGATOR ILL AT EASE
'Leaked out' findings expose nexuses
M. Shahidul Islam
Unexposed truths are sacred assets for researchers. Once exposed, they're mankind's treasure. Truth-seekers may feel enthralled as some of the unknown facts relating to the Peelkhana barbarity of February 25-26 (2009) are gushing out of the secretive wraps.
Mishandling of the justice process seems to be at the centre of it. When the CID on May 19 missed the 13th deadline in submitting its investigation report, aggrieved families within the armed forces began to loose all hopes. Meanwhile, the unwarranted laggards of the judicial process in dispensing justice to those abhorrent crimes has also begun to turn inexcusable.
Not coincidentally, the same day, leader of the Opposition, Khaleda Zia, cautioned the government at the Paltan rally not to play 'mischief' with BDR trial. The BNP leader claimed of possessing evidence that could lead to re-trial of the case if BNP comes to power.
Further consternation and anxiety have also re-surfaced for obvious reason. The BDR courts are rendering verdicts for the crime of rebellion, which is merely 7 years imprisonment and 100 Taka penalty, while the trials of crimes like murder, rape, arson, vandalism, etc. can not take place due to the scheme of justice having decided to try those crimes in civil court, only when police from New Market Thana of Dhaka city submits charge sheet based on the CID report.
Unusual delay
That has led observers and experts to view the entire process of justice as 'unusual'. For, there are crimes for which investigative mechanism need only to stretch to the political nexus of the criminality, all other factors being self evident. One of such crimes is mutiny or rebellion within the disciplined forces. In such occurrences, execution of the crime becomes self-evident due its sheer brazenness and barbarity. One only needs to identify what triggered such crimes and who were behind.
Historically, justice of crimes within discipline forces takes only weeks or months at the best, irrespective of the country or the place where they occur. In our own instances, organized criminalities committed within disciplined forces never took more than weeks to undergo trials (examples are trials of mutinies in 1976, 1977, 1982, etc), excepting the trial of the August 15, 1975 anti-BKSAL coup which faced a seemingly insurmountable legal obstacle due to an Indemnity Ordinance passed by the nation's lawmakers in 1976 having blocked the trial until the Ordinance's annulment in 1996.
One of the major reasons for dispensing justice in the quickest possible manner to the people involved in organized criminality within the disciplined forces is to ensure that the legacy does not prolong too long to spread the insubordination further and the deterrent is re-established with the briskness and the profundity it deserves.
The government should also bear in mind that, as days go by, the pending CID report is becoming more insignificant, the wheels of history moving inexorably to the opposite direction.
Report's anniversary
May 27 is the first anniversary of the submission of another investigation report by a 12-member probe committee, led by a former additional secretary, Anisuzzaman Khan. On May 27, 2009, exactly three months after the Peelkhana massacre, that government-sponsored investigation report got released to the public, albeit in a manner that had shocked experts and observers alike. The sixty-page long report having appeared before the public in six pages was in itself an act of duplicity and mischief making.
In para 5 of that truncated report, the probing body identified the names of some DADs, NCOs and BDR soldiers as being the leaders of the mutiny. This stunned all those knowing for sure that the political nexus of the crime was being overlooked and concealed from public sight, deliberately.
Now, following the opposition leader's disclosure on May 19 of having evidence of the trial being 'derailed', Anisuzzaman Khan is learnt to have decided to leave the country to settle abroad permanently. Sources close to him confirmed the veracity of his preparation to leave the country, but he himself is unwilling to talk to the media people.
Staggering exposures
Sources say the suave bureaucrat has had an unbearable spell of traumatic experiences since the report's submission, resulting in a leakage of the full content of his 60-page long findings. This scribe has gleaned through some salient portions of it and discovered a number of facts that people had heard before but could not confirm from reliable sources.
The report expressed suspicion about the behaviour of some officers of the Peelkhana-based 44 Rifle battalion, most of whom had 'miraculously' survived the massacre.
The report also chronicled the planning-related incidents of the rebellion and named DADs, NCOs and soldiers from the BDR who had met AL leader, barrister and MP, nephew of a very powerful politician at his office and residence prior to and after the December 2008 election, and immediately before the rebellion. The report identified two rebellious DADs, 10-12 BDR soldiers and one Zakir Hossain alias 'Leather Litton' (son of Torab Ali), and accused them of having met with another AL MP and cousin of the same powerful politician in mid-February 2009 (Anisuzzaman report; Section 6.1 (a); p-9).
These findings do corroborate with the undisclosed findings of the army-led investigation which too remained under tight wrap, although much of it has already been swirling among curious onlookers. The army-led report had expressed concerns about Juba League's top two leaders being wrong choices to lead negotiations with rebelling BDR soldiers due to their 'highly controversial' antecedents and lack of experience in conflict negotiation or crisis management. Besides, the two negotiators were accused by AL leader, Sheikh Salim, in early June 2007 of killing 11 innocent people in 2004 near Sheraton Hotel.
Sheikh Salim reportedly said: "Juba League president Jahangir Kabir Nanak and general secretary Mirza Azam were involved in killing 11 people by setting fire to a double-decker BRTC bus near Dhaka Sheraton Hotel in 2004. Both Nanak and Azam held a meeting at Juba League office in the evening on that day and made a plan to commit the arson." Salim added, "I protested the incident to our party chief and told her that politics cannot be done in such a way," reported the Daily New Nation on June 3, 2007, quoting key investigators of the incident as sources.
Although the army-led investigation confirmed the involvement of a local Awami League leader, Torab Ali, in the mutiny (whose son Zakir is identified in the Anisuzzaman report as the one having accompanied BDR officials during a meeting at Barrister's house), the precise political nexus of the incident was left untouched in the army investigation due to 'lack of mandate.'
Outside connection
That euphemism called 'lack of mandate' is what holding truths from being exposed to public. For, curiously, both Nanak & Mirza Azam returned to Bangladesh from India only weeks before the December 2008 elections, having taken shelter in the neighbouring country following declaration of emergency in January 2007.
Besides, the order to put Indian air force on combat readiness (Samachar.com, March 2, 2009) and to deploy para commandos from Agra to West Bengal (The Times of India, Mar 4, 2009) to deal with emergency situations in Bangladesh were indicative of Indian poise and readiness to cruise ahead with a military intervention inside Bangladesh, using the pretext of instability caused by the BDR mutiny.
External linkages to the BDR revolt can also be found from the seizure of the stashes of fire arms, equipment and other military gadgets at the BDR headquarters that are not used by any security agencies in the country (The Daily Star, Mar, 3, 2009). Experts believe those sophisticated military gadgets were supplied by external sources to conduct a kind of barbarity that would destroy the backbone of our national defence as irreparably as it eventually did.
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